COVID-19: Over 800,000 individuals sampled so far - Dr Noor Hisham

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.

Health director-general Datuk 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 percent. This means almost 99 percent of COVID-19 tests returned negative," he said at the Health Ministry's COVID-19 media briefing today.