Malaysia's COVID-19: Over 800,000 Individuals Sampled So Far

PUTRAJAYA (Malaysia), July 17 (Bernama) -- A total of 868,394 individuals have been sampled for COVID-19 in the country so far, a ratio of 27.14 individuals per 1,000 population. Malaysia’s Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the number of samples taken is on par with South Korea’s rate of 26.20 per 1,000 population. Neighbouring countries such as Singapore has a rate of 79.83 per 1,000 population; Vietnam (2.7), Australia (114.15); New Zealand (87.54)) and Japan (4.1), he said. Dr Noor Hisham also said that preliminary data from the Crisis Preparedness and Response Centre (CPRC) showed that Malaysia had done 1.57 million Reverse Transcriptase-Polymerase Chain Reaction (rt-pcr) and RTK Antigen tests as there were individuals who needed repeat testing. “Laboratory capacity for sampling in Malaysia increased to 37,000 samples a day, but the positive rate was only at 1.05 per cent. This means almost 99 per cent of COVID-19 tests returned negative,” he said at the Health Ministry’s COVID-19 media briefing Thursday. Dr Noor Hisham said despite daily COVID-19 cases now remaining low, the MOH was still actively monitoring for cases in the community through surveillance. In this regard, the ministry reported 129 COVID-19 cases detected through clinical surveillance activity, he said. This involved Influenza-Like Illness (ILI) sampling that recorded 15 positive cases from 3,174 samples, Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (85 cases from 21,544 samples) and pre-surgery (29 cases from 66,081 samples), he said. -- BERNAMA