MALAYSIA has defended its testing procedures for Covid-19, calling it “world-class” amid suggestions of a false test in the case of an 83-year-old American woman found to be positive yesterday.

Deputy Prime Minister Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail said the woman was confirmed to have tested positive twice.

“The woman tested positive twice (for novel coronavirus). After the first test, some said that we were not following proper procedures but we showed them our protocol and they agreed our protocols are world class.

“It’s not a false negative. It’s a positive,” she told reporters at the Health Ministry briefing today.

Dr Wan Azizah was responding to suggestions that the American woman, a passenger of a cruise ship docked in Cambodia, did not have the Covid-19 virus.

She said the woman had cough and fever, and her high temperature was caught by thermal scanners at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport as she entered the country from Cambodia.

The Cambodian authorities had also called on Malaysia to review its test results as it said they had done random sampling on the passengers and did not find any positive cases.

But, Dr Wan Azizah confirmed that the Covid-19 test was repeated for the American woman and her husband last night, yielding the same results – positive for the wife and negative for the husband.

On the random sampling, Dr Wan Azizah said: “They only did 20 or less than 10% of the passengers. We don’t want to dispute their methodology.

“We just tested them when they reached our country.”

On Friday, the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur had chartered Flight MH8763 to take 145 passengers from Sihanoukville, Cambodia, to Kuala Lumpur International airport.

Of the 145 passengers, two were found to have symptoms (cough and fever) while six others were quarantined. Another 137 passengers were allowed to leave the country. – February 16, 2020.