Ministry aims for 100,000 tests a day and more

 

With the state of emergency in place, more doctors and labs will be roped in to handle a greater number of tests. (Facebook pic)

PUTRAJAYA: The health ministry hopes to boost its Covid-19 testing capacity to about 100,000 a day, and eventually to 150,000 a day, and is to integrate medical staff from private and public hospitals to work where needed.

Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah today said that testing capacity would be increased and new labs brought on line.

There also would be increased use of human resources from the private sector, universities, the armed forces, and the science ministry.

Under emergency powers, healthcare professionals working in the public sector can be mobilised to the private sector, from one hospital to another, he said.

“Before this, you had to declare where you were practising but now they can cut across anywhere, as long as their services are needed,” he said, adding that this would help the ministry maximise the resources at hand.

Noor Hisham said 68 labs were currently processing RT-PCR (reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction) tests daily. The target, he said, would be to reach about 150,000 test a day.

“The capacity of certain labs can still be increased. With all 68 labs, I think the testing capacity can increase to about 100,000. But we’re also looking at new labs,” he said at his daily media briefing.

He said Malaysia had started with 23 labs last year but eventually trained the private sector to help the ministry process more RT-PCR tests.

Once the Covid-19 Assessment Centre is set up, Noor Hisham hoped that private hospitals would be able to accept certain groups of patients, such as expatriates, most of whom are currently being treated at University Malaya Medical Centre and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Centre.

He added that general practitioners will be roped in to assist the health ministry in monitoring Covid-19 patients being treated at home.

“As I’ve said, some private hospitals are already managing Covid-19 positive patients in their wards and ICUs. But we will try to coordinate in terms of streamlining the cases. We hope we can implement it by next week or so.” - FMT