RTK-Ag should be conducted by trained operators - Health DG

 

The Covid-19 Antigen Rapid Test Kit (RTK-Ag) should be conducted by trained operators, said Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

He said the RTK-Ag should also be performed within the first five to seven days following the onset of symptoms for best results.

"RTK-Ag testing is recommended when the health system is overburdened. Test kits sensitivity (for RTK-Ag) must be more than 80 percent and specificity more than 97 percent," he said on Twitter today.

He said the RTK-Ag is used when the turnaround time for the Real-Time Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) test is more than 48 to 72 hours or if the RT-PCR test is not available.

Recently, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin reportedly said Malaysia was one of the first countries in the world to use RTK-Ag to test for Covid-19 and the Health Ministry had been using it since June last year.

The kit was evaluated by the National Public Health Laboratory (NPHL) and the Institute of Medical Research (IMR) to ensure compliance with standards and later approved by the Medical Device Authority (MDA) for wider use in the community.

Muhyiddin said the RTK-Ag test was used as a confirmatory test in Sabah since Oct 5 last year and until Jan 14, a total of 365,740 RTK-Ag tests had been conducted with a positivity rate of 3.75 percent which helped the Health Ministry to manage the outbreak in the state.

Mass testing using the RTK-Ag test also helped manage the Covid-19 outbreak among foreign workers in the country, he said.

- Bernama