Tanzanian President investigates COVID-19 kits as goat and pawpaw test positive

Tanzanian president, John Magufuli on Sunday ordered a probe on the country’s coronavirus testing kits after samples taken from a goat and pawpaw tested positive.

Speaking at an event in Chato in the northwest of Tanzania, Magufuli said the COVID-19 testing kits which had been imported from abroad had “technical errors”.

The president said he had instructed Tanzanian security forces to check the quality of the kits, who then randomly obtained several non-human samples, including from a pawpaw, a goat, and a sheep, but had assigned them human names and ages.

According to him, these samples were then submitted to Tanzania’s laboratory to test for the coronavirus, with the lab technicians left deliberately unaware of their origins.

President Magufuli later disclosed that samples from the pawpaw and the goat tested positive for COVID-19, adding it was likely that some people were being tested positive when in fact they were not infected by the Coronavirus.

“We extracted a sample from a goat which turned positive. This tells you that something is not adding up,” he stated.

“Are we now supposed to quarantine goats and fruits?” President Magufuli questioned.