COVID-19: With new test kit, no need to send samples to labs - Health DG

As the Ministry of Health (MOH) has decided to use the antigen rapid test kit from South Korea, COVID-19 test samples will no longer be sent to the 43 MOH laboratories conducting the screening.

Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said all that was needed were biosafety cabinets and the test could be done at point of care, in clinics or hospitals.

“The sensitivity (rate) we are looking at (for the rapid test) is 84.4 per cent and the specificity rate of 100 per cent,” he said at the daily press conference on COVID-19 here today.

He said the MOH would proceed to test the population using the antigen rapid test kit and the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) screening in the labs would complement it in case there were any doubts over the results.

Dr Noor Hisham added that MOH expected to use the new test kit by next week.

-- BERNAMA