KUALA LUMPUR (May 6): The Ministry of Health (MoH) has increased its maximum capacity for reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) COVID-19 testing to 20,635 tests per day.

Its director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah attributed the latest increase in capacity to the automated testing machine from Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) that has been installed in the Institute for Medical Research (IMR). This enabled IMR to add 5,000 tests per day.

"What we have done so far is we have increased our labs to 44. And the efficiency and capabilities of the labs have also been improved. So we try to give the test reports within less than 24 hours," Noor Hisham said at today’s COVID-19 press briefing.

He noted that within the last 24 hours up to noon today, the Ministry had conducted RT-PCR testing on 15,113 samples.

Last week, Noor Hisham said that the Ministry aimed to step up testing capacity to about 22,000 by this week.

Apart from the one in IMR, he said that the automated testing machine from BGI will also be installed at the Public Health Laboratory in Kota Kinabalu, which will add another 1,000 tests a day.

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.

50,000 units of the antigen rapid test kits have arrived in Malaysia and have been distributed to Sabah, Sarawak, Johor for the Singapore-Malaysia border, as well as to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) and klia2.

Noor Hisham said the report for the usage of the antigen test kits will be given in the next few days as they are now still being assessed.

When the pandemic first broke about four months ago, Malaysia's daily testing capacity stood at only 3,500.