Malaysia keeping its virus screening rates up

PETALING JAYA: Malaysia is on par with countries such as South Korea in the number of Covid-19 screening per capita, says Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

He noted the country conducted 51.96 Covid-19 screening tests for every one thousand Malaysians, with only 0.8% found to be positive.

“In South Korea they do 46.41 tests for every 1,000 people and only 1% is positive.

“In our neighbouring country, Thailand, they conduct 6.57 (test) for every 1,000 people and the positive rate is almost the same with us,” said Dr Noor Hisham in a live press conference from his home yesterday.

He said New Zealand and Australia had the best testing rates with 205.7 and 309.61 screenings respectively for every 1,000 of their people.

Both New Zealand and Australia had also recorded very low positive rates at 0.2% and 0.3% respectively, said Dr Noor Hisham.

Dr Noor Hisham said Malaysia’s 60 labs conducted some 41,354 Reverse Real-Time Polymerase Chain (RT-PCR) tests daily.

“Yesterday (Oct 9), some 17,172 tests were conducted. The total cumulative RT-PCR done as of Oct 9 stands at 266,747 tests,” he said.

Dr Noor Hisham also said testing in Sabah had also increased by almost 100% to 4,000 tests daily.

On the healthcare workers at the intensive care unit (ICU) of Queen Elizabeth 11 Hospital in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Dr Noor Hisham said screenings had been conducted on all medical officers and nurses at the hospital.

“As of Oct 9, only two positive cases were detected. We are still investigating if the cases were contracted in the community or at the hospital.

“We are trying our best to ensure the nurses (and healthcare workers) comply with effective infection control measures and practise good clinical guideline,” he said.

An online portal reported that healthcare workers at the hospital in Kota Kinabalu were struggling to cope with their workload after many nurses in the ICU department were forced to self-quarantine.

Dr Noor Hisham added that to date, 579 healthcare workers had been infected from the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and from that, 198 were in Sabah.

He said that in October, 85 cases were recorded compared to the 68 cases last month.

Yesterday, Malaysia recorded 374 new Covid-19 cases, with three deaths reported.

Dr Noor Hisham said all three deaths were recorded in Sabah.

Two men aged 61 and 51 years old respectively and a 54-year-old woman were the latest casualties.

Dr Noor Hisham said Sabah recorded 277 cases, making it the most number of infections from the total number of cases recorded yesterday.

This is followed by Selangor (44 cases), Kedah (27 cases from the Tembok, or prison, cluster), Kuala Lumpur (four cases) and Putrajaya (one case).

From the 374 cases, only two were imported cases from the Philippines.

Dr Noor Hisham also said there were six new clusters reported – four in Selangor and one each in Sabah and Sarawak.