A Selangor state assemblyman urged the Health Ministry to expand testing capacity since private clinics have been roped in to conduct COVID-19 testing.
“In the past, only the Government healthcare facilities conduct COVID-19 tests, so they had to be prudent.
“But now, the Government has roped in private clinics to help out. So, don’t be stingy and expand testing to more people working at the frontline,” Rajiv Rishyakaran told FocusM.
Since last month, the Bukit Gasing state assemblyman has been offering COVID-19 tests to the public, using the RTK-Antigen Test kit at the discounted price of RM70.
He had also pressured the Government to allow private clinics to conduct COVID-19 tests as the public healthcare facilities are getting overwhelmed with rising number of infections, adding that the Health Ministry could procure the test kits at an even cheaper price due to bulk orders.
Subsequently, the Health Ministry started engaging private healthcare clinics to conduct COVID-19 tests on migrant workers.
Test policemen, gov’t officers
On testing, Rajiv said that with the conditional movement control order (CMCO) being relaxed, the Government should expand testing to those in high-risk profession, those who had casual contacts and anyone suffering from symptoms but no close contact.
“We should do more testing on police officers, local council officials and those who man counters at Government departments.
“Imagine if only one counter is opened at the Government agency. That person may have to face 100 person in a day. So that individual needs to get tested,” he said.
On the frequency, Rajiv said those mentioned should at least get tested once every fortnight.
“Once things get settled to some extent, perhaps we can test them once a week,” he said.
Rajiv added that mass testing was needed due to the rise in COVID-19 cases in the country and the scarcity of data shared by the Health Ministry.
“Of course, the Health Ministry updates the number of cases, deaths and recovery but they don’t tell us the pattern on how the virus spreads.
“And only the ministry has the statistics of which professions/sectors are most commonly infected,. Using that data, they should zoom in on those sectors.
“Besides, testing has become more affordable now as well,” said Rajiv. – Dec 7, 2020.
