THE Health Ministry will step up its Covid-19 test capacity to almost 22,000 tests a day  by next week, Health Director-General Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said today.

He said private and public labs could now run 16,635 tests a day.

Noor Hisham said a machine from the Beijing Genomics Institute will be installed at the Institute for Medical Research (IMR) and could increase the capacity by 5,000, while the Kota Kinabalu Public Health Laboratory in Sabah, could conduct an additional 1,000 tests.

This brings the total additional capacity to 6,000.

The BGI machine in IMR is expected to be operational this weekend.

Currently, 43 labs nationwide are running Covid-19 tests.

He said Malaysia was performing well in its testing capacity, adding that the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) benchmark of effective infection surveillance was 10% tests being positive.

 “We are better than 10%. Now we are at about 4%. If we are detecting more than 10%, then more needs to be done, ” he told reporters in Putrajaya.

Malaysia has also taken on a more targeted approach to testing.

The health ministry has previously aimed to increase its capacity to 16,500 this month. – April 27, 2020.