PUTRAJAYA must embark on mass testing for Covid-19 or else the country will suffer more human and economic losses, said a group of Pakatan Harapan MPs today.

The group, consisting of two former ministers and two deputies, said the government must also have a complete overhaul of its contact-tracing system.

“We strongly believe that the government must heed the call of many medical experts to embark on mass testing, starting with screening all high-risk areas, such as foreign workers’ living quarters, prisons and the community living near to them,” they said in a joint statement.

The statement was signed by Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad (Kuala Selangor MP and former health minister), Dr Lee Boon Chye (Gopeng MP and former deputy health minister), Yeo Bee Yin (Bakri MP and former energy, science, technology, environment and climate change minister) and her former deputy Isnaraissah Munirah Majilis (Kota Belud MP).

According to a parliamentary reply, the government facilities can do close to 19,489 PCR tests per day while the private sector can do 59,485 tests per day – that is a national total testing capacity of close to 80,000 PCR tests a day, they said.

However, if the government is concerned about the cost of conducting more tests, it could conduct the much cheaper RTK antigen tests for mass screening, they said.

“If we dispute over the exorbitant cost of doing this screening, please resort to the inexpensive and faster turn-around time RTK antigen tests, which are more appropriate for the purpose of mass screening.

“Be that as it may, we are undoubtedly capable and have the capacity to do mass testing for targeted areas.”

They said since many positive cases are asymptomatic (80%), mass testing becomes important to enable early isolation to take place and prevent further spreading and “spillovers” into the community.

While more testing would mean an increase in positive cases, this was not the time to “hide our head in the sand”.

“We must face it head on, find all the positive cases in the community then isolate them. The government must invest in doing mass testing because the human and economic cost that we have to pay later is hugely in excess of the cost of doing mass testing.”

The MPs also called upon a complete overhaul over the contact-tracing system.

“It was reported that MySejathera app has only directly detected 4% of total reported Covid-19 cases in Malaysia, indicating that the government may still primarily rely on manual contact tracing, i.e asking the positive patients who their close contacts are and test accordingly.”

The MPs said by not leveraging big data analytics using data collected from MySejahtera app and combining it with other data available in the government’s system, including public data, it is missing out on developing a more sophisticated way of tracing cases.

“We must keep on innovating and not sit complacently on our early successes and laurels. We’ve long overtaken China, the global epicentre, with 125,000 cases with more than 515 deaths.” – January 8, 2021.