KUALA LUMPUR – The Covid-19 antigen rapid test kits should be handled by trained operators, said Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said.
He said the RTK-Ag tests should also be performed within the first five to seven days following the onset of symptoms for best results.
“This especially goes for new clusters with high positivity rate and when concordance study shows positive predictive value and high specificity.
“RTK-Ag testing confirmation is recommended when the health system is overburdened. Test kit sensitivity must be more than 80% and specificity more than 97%," he said in his Twitter post today, listing five general recommendations for RTK-Ag testing for Covid-19 confirmation.
Noor Hisham said the RTK-Ag kits are used when the turnaround time for the real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT PCR) technique is more than 48 to 72 hours or if the RT PCR test is not available.
Recently, Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin was reported as saying that Malaysia was one of the first few countries in the world to use RTK-Ag for screening tests, with the Health Ministry using it since June last year.
The kit was evaluated by the National Public Health Laboratory and the Institute of Medical Research to ensure compliance with the standards required and later approved by the Medical Device Authority for wider use in the community.
Muhyiddin said RTK-Ag tests were used as confirmatory tests in Sabah since October 5 last year and until January 14, a total of 365,740 RTK-Ag tests had been conducted with a positivity rate of 3.75%, which helped the Health Ministry manage the outbreak in the state.
He said that mass testing using RTK-Ag tests was also used to manage the Covid-19 outbreak among foreign workers in the country. – Bernama, January 22, 2021
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