The CEO of the state laboratory assured parliament on Wednesday that the service was making progress in reducing its massive Covid-19 test backlog despite the ongoing global shortage of kits and reagents.

The backlog at the National Health Laboratory Service (NHLS) of unprocessed specimens, which stood at a peak of 101,000 on May 21, had been whittled down to 70,219 by June 9 and the number of outstanding specimens in SA’s hardest-hit province, the Western Cape, had been reduced from 21,000 to 7,266 over the same period, Kamy Chetty told MPs on Wednesday...

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