PETALING JAYA: Widespread testing of Covid-19 among asymptomatic individuals is not currently recommended, says the Health director-general.
In a tweet on Tuesday (July 6), Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah (pic) quoted the latest World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines, which recommended that testing of asymptomatic persons be done in specific instances and not en masse.
“Testing of asymptomatic individuals can be informative in instances such as follow-up of high-risk groups, like contacts of confirmed or probable cases, or the testing of healthcare and long-term care facility workers frequently exposed to the risk of infection.
“Widespread testing of asymptomatic population is not currently recommended, based on the lack of evidence on the impact and cost-effectiveness of such approaches and the approach might risk diverting resources from higher-priority testing indications, ” he said.
He also said that WHO however recommended that all individuals meeting the suspected case definition for Covid-19 should be tested for the virus regardless of vaccination status or disease history.
A suspected Covid-19 case is defined as a person who meets both clinical and epidemiological criteria.
Clinical criteria include acute onset of fever and cough, or any three of the following symptoms: fever, cough, fatigue, headache, sore throat, muscle ache, head cold, chest tightness, anorexia, nausea, vomitting, diarrhoea, altered mental status.
Epidemiological criteria include residing or working in areas with high risk of virus transmission, travel to an area with community transmission within 14 days prior to symptom onset, or working in any healthcare setting.
There has been criticism that the Malaysian authorities have not been doing enough testing, with the country’s test positivity rate hovering between 7% and 8%.
The country’s test positivity rate, which indicates the portion of positive results out of the total Covid-19 samples tested, is higher than WHO’s 5% benchmark.
