Malaysia Looking To Increase Covid-19 Tests

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Malaysia is bolstering its Covid-19 testing capabilites as Health Director-General Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said that soon the country would be able to do 6,000 more tests on top of the current capacity of 16,000.

He said initially the country had the capacity of 11,500 tests before it was gradually increased.

We have increased our capacity to 16,000 and yesterday we managed to do 13,614 samples a day, so which means we are pushing our capacity to 16,385 from the 43 labs that we have.

Health D-G Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah

The Health Ministry is also looking at installing automated testing machines from China in two locations – Institute of Medical Research (IMR) and a public health lab in Kota Kinabalu.

We have two centres – Institute of Medical Research (IMR) that we’re going to install the Beijing Genome Insitute (BGI) automated testing so that will give us an increase of 5,000 testing a day.

Health D-G Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah

MOH also looking to install the machine at a National Public Health Laboratory in in Kota Kinabalu, which can add another 1,000 more tests in Sabah.

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