Clarifying testing rate, DG assures Covid-19 under control in Malaysia

CORONAVIRUS | Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah has clarified that Malaysia is conducting 27.14 Covid-19 tests per 1,000 population.

This comes after several MPs questioned why the country’s testing rates were lower than other countries during yesterday’s Dewan Rakyat session.

Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, in particular, had said Malaysia was running 0.18 tests per 1,000 population - far lower than Australia and Canada which have similar population sizes.

During his media briefing today, Noor Hisham said the country’s testing rate was on par with South Korea (26.29 per 1,000 population), a country lauded for its Covid-19 response.

This, he said, was sufficient given the low number of virus cases in the country.

“Even though the laboratory capacity for samples has increased to 37,000 samples per day, our positive rate is only 1.05 percent. This means almost 99 percent of Covid-19 test results are negative,” he said.

However, Malaysia’s rates lagged behind Singapore (79.83 per 1,000 population), New Zealand (87.54 per 1,000 population) and Australia (114.15 per 1,000 population).

As for real test numbers, Malaysia conducted 6,893 tests as of yesterday or 19 percent of the total testing capacity.

Asked why tests were below capacity, Noor Hisham explained that there were fewer patients now available for testing.

This was even though the ministry has been swabbing patients with influenza-like illnesses (ILI), severe acute respiratory infection (Sari) and before operations as part of its surveillance measures.

“When the cases are fewer now, those coming to the hospital are also fewer,” he answered.

Nevertheless, he assured that Covid-19 was well controlled in the country as evident by the low daily case numbers.

“The virus is well controlled in the population. If the virus was not well controlled in the population, we will see more patients in our ward and in ICU [...]

“So when we see a reduced number, that means we are able to control the infection. Although we have opened all sectors - economic, social and education sectors - we do not see a surge in cases,” he explained.

As of noon today, Malaysia recorded three new cases, 12 recoveries and no deaths.

The top official added that the ministry will continue to conduct random tests on high-risk communities, which have been expanded from eight to 11 groups.

Malaysiakini had contacted the ministry on what the three new groups are. - Mkini