Concerned by the need to curb the spread of the Coronavirus among long distance truck drivers in the region, plans are underway to deploy mobile lab clinics at border crossings.

An emergency bilateral meeting on Wednesday between Kenya and Uganda’s Health and EAC Affairs ministries also resolved to increase Covid-19 testing points on the Northern Corridor, the most affected route in the region.

Nine mobile laboratories were deployed to the EAC partner states as part of a $1.8 million donation by the Mobile Laboratory Project funded by the German government through Kfw.

They are equipped to also test for Ebola and Marburg, kitted with personal protective equipment but lack the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and antibody testing machine that is reliably used to test Covid-19 in humans.

“Following the increase of Covid-19 cases among truck drivers from Kenya transiting through Uganda, we have proposed four testing centres in Mombasa, Kemri-Nairobi, Eldoret and at Malaba-Uganda border,” said Dr Michael Katende, the acting head of Health in the EAC Secretariat in Arusha.

“We do not have testing facilities at the Kenya-Uganda border. Therefore, the region is planning to deploy mobile laboratory kits at Malaba on the Kenya-Uganda border to carry out testing,” he said.