This story has been updated.
KUALA LUMPUR (April 9): The Ministry of Health (MoH) has conducted COVID-19 screenings on 69,675 people so far, 4,228 of whom were found positive.
This translates to an estimated rate of screenings of 2.15 per thousand people.
For comparison, according to ourworldindata.org, Australia has screened 12.57 per thousand people, 9.55 per thousand people in Canada, 13.65 per thousand people in Italy, 3.46 per thousand people in the United Kingdom, and 0.05 per thousand people in Indonesia, as of April 8.
The data was taken from the respective countries' official health authorities.
South Korea has screened 9.06 per thousand people and Japan achieved 0.37 per thousand people as of April 6.
Meanwhile, Germany - known to lead the way in Europe with large-scale testing of its population for the coronavirus - was reported to be conducting more than 50,000 coronavirus tests a day. It has achieved screening of 15.97 per thousand people as of April 5.
MoH director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said laboratories across Malaysia can now test up to 11,546 samples per day for the coronavirus.
He previously said the Ministry was targeting to achieve 16,500 tests per day by mid-April, and admitted that MoH has yet to achieve that target.
At a press conference today, Noor Hisham said: “During the first stage, the Institute for Medical Research was the only laboratory involved in conducting COVID-19 screening tests in Malaysia.
"The laboratory’s capacity has now been expanded and strengthened to include 43 laboratories from the public, universities and the private sector."