KUALA LUMPUR – Health Director-General Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah wants laboratories operated by the military, universities, and private entities to ramp up their efficiency when processing Covid-19 tests.
During an online press conference earlier today, Dr Noor Hisham said that public laboratories were conducting RT-PCR tests at nearly 100% capacity.
He said that university laboratories were only operating at 27%, emphasising there is more room for them to conduct tests.
Private laboratories, meanwhile, are operating at 31% capacity, and army hospital laboratories at 24%.
The health director-general proposed that these laboratories hire more staff and change policies that would allow them to process more samples.
Dr Noor Hisham said that the nation would be able to test close to 76,805 samples a day if these facilities are utilised.
“The capacity of university, military and private laboratories can be increased more. We think if they increase (the number of processed tests), then we can increase testing to more than 76,000 a day.
“They do have the capacity but they are not doing it.
“So now we have to encourage them to accept more samples. We hope we can work as a team, integrating public and private (laboratories),” Dr Noor Hisham said, according to a Malaysiakini report. – The Vibes, February 5, 2021
