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PUTRAJAYA: The Health Ministry wants to double its testing capacity for Covid-19 to 150,000 per day by establishing more laboratories and improving collaboration with the private sector.
Tan Sri Chief Health Officer Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah said that the country can currently produce a maximum of 70,000 tests a day.
“At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, we only had 23 labs that could run 1,000 RT-PCR tests a day.
“But today, we have increased the number of labs to 68 across the country.
“We hope that in the near future we will be able to do 100,000 tests a day and eventually up to 150,000,” Dr. Noor Hisham said at the ministry’s Covid-19 press conference on Thursday (Jan 21).
However, Dr. Noor Hisham said that the lack of human resources was one of the reasons the ministry was unable to increase its testing capacity.
He said it is necessary to strengthen the ministry’s laboratories, as well as those established by the private sector, the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, the universities and the Armed Forces.
“We believe that some labs can still increase their capacity.
“But we also need to look at human resources and reagents, not just in our ministry, but also in other labs,” he said, adding that they could also further maximize the use of existing facilities.
Reagents are key chemicals required for testing for Covid-19.
Previously, Dr. Noor Hisham revealed that the country’s labs were conducting more than 47,000 Covid-19 tests per day, representing approximately 63% of their maximum capacity.
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