PUTRAJAYA (April 27): After achieving its initial target of 16,500 Covid-19 tests per day, the Ministry of Health is seeking to step up the testing capacity to 22,000 by next week. 

Its director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the current maximum capacity across all 43 labs in the country stands at 16,635 per day.

This, he said, is set to increase when the automated testing machine from Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), which has already been installed in the Institute for Medical Research (IMR), is fully operational, enabling IMR to add 5,000 tests per day. 

The ministry is also looking to install the BGI automated testing machine at the Public Health Laboratory in Kota Kinabalu, which will add another 1,000 tests a day. 
 
"With the additional 6,000 tests per day, we are increasing our capacity to about 22,000 tests a day, probably by next week or so. So capacity-wise, I think that’s good," Noor Hisham said at his daily press conference. 

In comparison, Guangdong province in China, with a population of 110 million, has a daily capacity for Covid-19 testing of only 30,000, the director-general said, citing medical experts who are currently in Malaysia to provide consultation on combating Covid-19.

He also pointed out that the 22,000 tests per day do not include the antigen rapid test kits from South Korea that the ministry had procured earlier. As such, when the test kits arrive — by this week at the latest — the maximum daily testing capacity in the country will increase even further.

When the pandemic first started, Malaysia's daily testing capacity was only 3,500.

Noor Hisham also maintained that the targeted approach for Covid-19 screenings that the ministry has been taking has proven to be the right approach for the country. As such, he said this approach will continue going forward. 

"If you look into MCO 1, 2 and 3 (the three phases of the Movement Control Order so far), the targeted approach works. And, today, we are seeing the results of it, where we are now in the recovery phase. This means that we have been able to flatten the curve and have prevented that exponential surge of cases," he said. 

"Certainly, that approach has shown results. And because it has shown results, we will continue to embrace the targeted approach based on locality as well as community," Noor Hisham added.

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