JOHANNESBURG — Testing materials remain in short supply across Africa, but the head of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says a new platform to pool the continent’s purchasing powers has obtained about 15 million coronavirus testing kits for the next six months.

John Nkengasong said Africa’s 54 countries are still far behind the goal of conducting at least 10,000 tests per 1 million people. He said just about 1,700 tests are being carried out per million compared to about 37,000 per million in Italy and 30,000 per million in the UK.

Nkengasong said 3.4 million tests have been conducted so far across Africa, which has a population of 1.3 billion people, and testing capacity is “increasing very, very rapidly.” Africa’s numbers are rising steadily as testing improves, with a 31% increase in new confirmed cases since last week. The continent’s confirmed cases are now above 162,000, representing less than 3% of the global cases.