THE government must take immediate steps to maximise the country’s Covid-19 testing potential to restore public trust and confidence in its management of the pandemic, said DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang.

He said public trust in the government’s handling of pandemic has plumbed new depths, with the high number of daily cases and deaths.

Malaysia yesterday recorded 3,391 new infections bringing the total number of cases to 234,874 since the epidemic began.

Another 19 patients died yesterday, bringing this total to 845.

Lim, the MP for Iskandar Puteri, supported the call by director-general of heath Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah for a major improvement in Covid-19 screening, so it could reach its potential maximum capacity of 76,805 tests a day.

He said the weaknesses in the system, highlighted by Noor Hisham, should have been revealed and rectified many months ago, adding there have been calls for an integrated national strategy “right from the beginning”.

Lim said Noor Hisham’s call on private, non-Ministry of Health laboratories run by the military, universities and private entities to be more efficient in processing Covid-19 test samples, is grave cause for concern.

The director-general said, while public hospital laboratories were running RT-PCR tests for the Covid-19 at almost 100% capacity, other laboratories were testing way below levels of which they were capable.

University laboratories, Noor Hisham said, were only utilising 27% of their capacity, while private laboratories were using 31% and military hospital laboratories 24%.

The 68 public and private Covid-19 laboratories nationwide conducted a total of 33,078 tests yesterday, a mere 43% of the daily maximum capacity.

Noor Hisham had proposed these laboratories hire more staff, redesign internal processes and improve data integration, so they can process Covid-19 samples more quickly.

He added if these facilities stepped up, Malaysia would be able to test closer to 76,805 tests per day – the daily maximum testing capacity.

Lim said the question now is: what is being done to ensure that there is now an “all-of-government” and “whole-of-society” strategy and approach in the war against the Covid-19 pandemic to restore public confidence, trust and support?

He said with such serious weaknesses in the testing capacity, he wondered if he could be assured that Malaysia “does not repeat the chaos of national vaccination roll-outs experienced by other countries”.

He said with Malaysia’s present trajectory of increasing numbers of Covid-19 cases, it may even overtake Philippines in the next few months in cumulative totals.

Lim said on November 18 last year, Malaysia was ranked 85 in number of Covid-19 cases, but has since “set a world record” when it jumped 36 places in two-and-a-half months to be ranked 49.

“I had expected Malaysia to be ranked among the top 50 countries with the most cumulative total of Covid-19 cases before the Chinese New Year, but we have achieved this dubious feat a week earlier,” he added. – February 6, 2021.