However, health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said it should arrive earliest by Friday or next week.
“Now we are looking at a G2G (government-to- government) initiative to assist us in how we can best facilitate the import of this test kit.”
He hoped Wisma Putra will continue assisting the health ministry to obtain the test kit as soon as possible.
Earlier this month, the health ministry said it would start using antigen rapid test kits from South Korea, which have proven to have high accuracy.
Noor Hisham had previously said the ministry hoped to order up to one million units of these rapid test kits.
The rapid test kit, Noor Hisham said, will complement its reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests in use at the ministry’s 43 labs.
With the rapid test kit, Noor Hisham said health workers will be able to “go to the community” and take swabs at airports (including passengers in transit) or clinics. They can obtain the results in 30 to 45 minutes.
45 GPs infected with Covid-19
Meanwhile, Noor Hisham said they have informed most of its frontline workers to take extra precautions when dealing with patients with suspected dengue, pneumonia or severe acute respiratory infections (SARI).
He said, sometimes, when doctors treat such patients, they do not protect themselves.
Noor Hisham said that already 45 general practitioners (GPs) have contracted Covid-19.
“So they need to protect themselves when treating patients with coughs, colds and those with a runny nose.
“We are telling our doctors that all SARI patients should be considered as Covid-19 positive, unless proven otherwise,” he said, adding that a circular had already been issued on this matter.
Noor Hisham said this when asked if the health ministry was going to change its way of treating patients after a Covid-19 patient, who was initially suspected of having dengue, caused the formation of a new Covid-19 cluster in Johor.
On a separate matter, Noor Hisham said he would be meeting the prime minister a few days before the third phase of the movement control order (MCO) ends on April 28. This meeting may take place on April 24.
He said he will advise Muhyiddin Yassin on whether to extend or lift the MCO, enforced to contain the pandemic.
“Our advice will be based on the data we have.”
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