MASS Covid-19 screening programmes may be ideal for active case detection but they are also very costly, health experts said.

They said the costs involved might limit states from undertaking free mass screenings among its population.

At present, the mass screening conducted by Selangor throughout the state to capture the silent carriers costs RM70 per person.

Selangor Task Force for Covid-19 (STFC) chairman and former health minister Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad said the cost includes the price of the test kit, the system, logistics and human resources.

Universiti Putra Malaysia medical epidemiologist Associate Prof Dr Malina Osman said mass screening was a good move but states would be constrained by the expenses involved.

“Other states should also impose mass screening but I think the high costs for screening may limit this effort,” she told The Malaysian Insight.

Instead, she said a full-fledged lockdown and mass vaccination would help to reduce the cases.

Malaysian Public Health Physicians’ Association president Dr Zainal Ariffin Omar also agreed that other states should follow suit by offering free screenings, but suggested they focused on red zones first.

He also said the high number of daily cases reported in Selangor in recent weeks could be due to the mass testing undertaken in the state.

“Yes. Part of the cases coming from the voluntary testing by the state government,” he said.

He added that the current number of daily cases in Malaysia – although on a 6,000-figure bracket – may not actually reflect the actual situation.

He warned that there could be more cases that are going undetected in the community.

He estimated the actual number of positive cases could be two to three times higher than current statistics.

With more people screened, the higher the positive cases would be, he said.

He said if the detection of positive cases was low despite the mass testing, it means that the infection in the community was under control.

Dr Malina, on the other hand, said there could be several factors contributing to the high number of infections in Selangor.

“Apart from aggressive screening, other factors include backlogged cases, sporadic cases and recent Raya celebrations; and Selangor having a high density of population,” she added.

Selangor began its statewide free Covid-19 screening programme on May 8 as part of its Public Health Action Plan.

Menteri Besar Amirudin Shari recently attributed the spike in cases in the country’s richest state to “silent carriers” who were unaware they were carrying the virus.

Elaborating on the state government’s strategy, Dr Dzulkefly said there was no specific target on how many people will be screened under the free screening programme.

“We do not set a number. As you can observe, some places we manage to screen about 600, while in others up to 5,000,” he told The Malaysian Insight.

“We encourage people to turn up, especially those from the B40, or maybe large families who otherwise will not have access to testing due to financial costs in these difficult times.

“We also have a lot of worried residents who are close contacts but are yet to be called by the Ministry of Health,” he added.

The country reported 6,509 cases yesterday with Selangor continues to lead the daily tally with 2,049 cases.

As of May 22, a total of 29,239 individuals were screened under the state’s free screening programme. Of this, 1,494 were suspected as Covid-19 positive. – May 25, 2021.