COVID-19 | The Sabah government hopes to clear a backlog in Covid-19 testing within the next four days, after appointing three private hospitals and laboratories on Monday to help cope with the influx of test samples.
Bernama quoted Sabah Local Government and Housing Minister Masidi Manjun as saying that the Sabah Health Department currently has 10,400 outstanding samples to tests for the presence of the coronavirus.
“I have announced that we have appointed three private hospitals and laboratory for the purpose.
“We suppose the cases of the outstanding samples will be resolved, given their ability to process more samples that had been sent.
“We hope the outstanding samples can be settled in three or four days, meaning after this we expect lower statistics,” he reportedly told a press conference in Kota Kinabalu today.
Meanwhile, a separate Bernama report states that a new laboratory is being set up in Tawau and will be ready in two weeks.
“When this lab is ready, Covid-19 test results will be known faster,” Tawau district health officer Dr G Navindran told reporters today after witnessing the opening of the armed forces field hospital in the district.
Tawau is one of the worst-hit districts in Sabah, with 853 cases recorded in the 14 days up to noon today excluding cases that were imported from outside the district. It is behind only Kota Kinabalu with 1,410 cases and Semporna with 969 cases.
The report quoted Navindran as saying that samples taken in Tawau were sent to laboratories in Kota Kinabalu for processing.
This distance is nearly 300km away by air. He said the samples were taken to DGi Laboratory in Kota Kinabalu that can process 1,000 samples per day, apart from the public health laboratory at Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Universiti Malaysia Sabah laboratory.
He estimated that 8,000 tests had been conducted in Tawau, but there are still 3,000 to 4,000 samples yet to be processed.
“This is laboratory overload as all districts are conducting screening and sending the samples to the same lab (in Kota Kinabalu),” he reportedly said.
Earlier today, Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah told his daily press conference that the three government laboratories in Sabah continue to operate at over-capacity.
As of yesterday, the Sabah laboratories have a capacity of 2,600 tests daily but managed to run 3,551 tests, he added.
This is in addition to 2,404 samples outsourced to private laboratories, and some excess samples were flown by the air force to Kuala Lumpur for testing. - Mkini
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