PUTRAJAYA: The Health Ministry is not practising mass screening for Covid-19 as its strategy is geared towards a more focused approach, such as targeting those in high-risk groups.
Addressing questions on why the authorities have not adopted a mass screening approach, Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the ministry is taking the necessary steps to cover as many potential infections as possible.
"We are using a focused or targeted approach involving those in the high risk groups.
"The high risk groups include those who have attended the (Seri Petaling tabligh) gathering and tahfiz schools, and those related to the Rohingya, for example, who have also attended the gathering.
"So those related to these group and their contacts, most importantly their family members and close contacts, we are tracing them and advising them to come forward and then tests are done on them.
"This is why we do not conduct mass screening," he told a press conference today.
Other measures include moves to place those in contact with positive cases under the Patient under Investigation (PUI) classification and imposing a 14-day quarantine period for those returning from abroad starting from Apr 3.
Dr Noor Hisham said the ministry would continue to enhance the laboratories' capacity, with an overall capacity of 11,500 tests daily.
He said there are currently over 8,000 samples still awaiting results.
Apart from procuring two more laboratories (currently 43 labs nationwide), Dr Noor Hisham said the ministry is looking at procuring new test kits from South Korea, which have an accuracy rate of 80 per cent, and an automated device from China to ensure a higher turnaround of results for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing to detect the Covid-19 virus.