KUALA LUMPUR, March 29 — The Ministry of Higher Education (KPT) and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (Mosti) have prepared 10 diagnostic labs for the Ministry of Health (MOH), to allow for increased Covid-19 testing works.
MOH director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said that the ministries have also provided a mobile lab to allow it to be located at Covid-19 hotspots and conduct on-site testings.
“Most recently, to assist MOH with increasing Covid-19 detection capacity, the Ministry of Higher Education and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation have provided ten additional diagnostic labs at institutions of higher learning, university teaching hospitals, including one mobile laboratory that can be deployed to hotspots.
“All ten of these additional diagnostic labs will be able to perform 42,420 tracking tests per month or 1,414hours,” he said during a press conference in Putrajaya.
Dr Noor Hisham said that in the early stages, the Institute for Medical Research Medical Research (IMR) was the only laboratory directly involved in running the Covid-19 detection test in Malaysia.
He said the capacity of the laboratory has now been expanded and strengthened involving 25 laboratories nationwide.
“The lab network consists of 18 MOH laboratories — namely IMRs, the National Public Health Laboratory(MKAK) Sungai Buloh, 12 laboratories at the MOH hospital level and four Public Health Laboratory at the state level in Johor, Kelantan, Perak and Sabah and seven private labs — namely Lablink (M) Sdn Bhd, Pantai Premier Pathology Sdn Bhd, Neogenix Laboratories Sdn Bhd, Clinipath (M) Sdn Bhd, BP Clinical Lab Sdn Bhd (Glenmarie Branch), Sunway Medical Centre and Gribbles Pathology Sdn Bhd,” Dr Noor Hisham added.
