THE Health Ministry (MOH) has recorded 107,421 Covid-19 cases from individuals who used the RTK self-test kit, said Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

He said that the positive cases recorded up to September 13 were out of 758,919 individuals who had used the RTK-Ag self-tests.

Noor Hisham said the National Crisis Preparedness and Response Centre (CPRC) reported that the number of tests and positive rates for all Covid-19 detection tests, namely PCR, RTK-Ag (professional), and RTK-Ag (self-test) according to Epidemiology Week (EW) has shown continuous and encouraging improvement over several weeks.

He said that all reported Covid-19 test results were important, as it will affect the overall positive rate in the country.

This also showed increased public awareness of the importance of conducting Covid-19 detection tests, Noor Hisham said.

“Although MOH is constantly striving to increase the capacity of Covid-19 tests in government and private health facilities, with the cooperation of the public to conduct self-screening tests, this number (testing) can be further increased.”

Noor Hisham also said those with symptoms or are high-risk, especially close contacts, should immediately conduct screening tests and report to the ministry through the MySejahtera application.

“This screening can be done either by using the self-test kit or going to any nearby health facility.

“Early detection of cases using this self-test kit can help individuals to monitor health and self-assess risks for seeking healthcare before it is too late, thus reducing Brought-in-Dead (BID) cases.”

He added that the self-test kit is easy to use, produces results quickly and speeds up the process of positive individuals being identified and subsequently isolated so that the risk of transmission to other individuals, especially the vulnerable can be reduced.

“The public is also advised to use the self-test kit that has been approved by the Medical Device Authority (MDA) to obtain valid results. 

“Each individual must report the test results in the MySejahtera application whether the results are positive, negative, or invalid to enable follow -up action to be taken by MOH.” – September 15, 2021.