Selamat Hari Raya AdilFitri to our Muslim friends.
Yesterday, MOH said that the number of tests for the past few days exceeded MOH capacity of 26,500 tests per day because we now have the antigen tests. It also announced that the testing capacity would be increased further to 30,000 daily tests when another 5 labs come on board. Over the past 3 months (excluding the antigen tests) we have increased our testing capacity 15fold as can be seen below.
Period Test capacity
(No of daily tests)
Pre-MCO 2,000
Late March 7,000
Mid April 16,500
Early May 26,500
Near future 30,000
Source: Various media reports
 |
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For those who have not been following MOH briefings, we originally relied on the PCR tests requiring lab diagnosis. Then in early May, MOH received about 150,000 antigen test kits that do not require lab diagnosis (Yes – this is the one that led to the anti-corruption probe) that was distributed mainly to Sabah and Sarawak.
However, looking at MOH statement on the testing capacity, somehow this antigen test is not taken into account when MOH talks about testing capacity. It looks as if MOH reference is the PCR testing capacity only. We must all wonder why MOH interpreted it this way.
- If you want to look at overall performance, you must look at overall capacity.
- If you want to consider only one category of the testing capacity e.g. PCR, then you must compare the actual for that particular category i.e. PCR
- Mixing them up doesn't really make sense unless the intention is to provide an uninformative picture.
The other thing I want to point out is that MOH concept of testing is very different from what Worldodometer is reporting (which I presumed is consistently applied by Worldodomenter for all the countries)
If you look at the table below that compared what MOH reported yesterday with what I picked up from Worldodometer, you will see what I mean.
|
Date
|
No
of daily test as per MOH
|
No
of daily tests as per Worldodometer
|
|
20 May
|
27,998
|
9,061
|
|
21 May
|
30,020
|
10,093
|
|
22 May
|
28,016
|
10,318
|
- When MOH talked about the number of tests carried out, it does not equate to the number of new people tested.
- When Worldodometer reports its daily tests, it refers to the number of new people tested. BTW I have checked Worldometer against some of the testing reported by some US state governors and the figures do match.
I have not seen any report specifying how MOH defined daily number of tests but I understand that MOH testing capacity is also used to re-test people. For example, those under quarantine are routinely tested at least twice – I think Worldodometer would treat this as one test whereas MOH would consider this as 2 tests.
I don’t know how Worldodometer picked up its figures for Malaysia. Maybe MOH has a separate report to other parties than the ones released to the media. I have noticed that MOH used the phrase “number screened” when it talks about how many people in a cluster have been checked to see whether they have the virus. So “screening” may be MOH lingo for testing new people. Unfortunately, I have not seen this term being used in this manner elsewhere.
When you look at how our testing capacity has been deployed over the past few months, we have the following picture as shown in the table below.
Although the capacity has increased by 24,500 tests daily, not all the increase has gone to testing for new cases. If you look at the last column to the right, you will see the testing capacity that has been deployed elsewhere rather than for testing new cases|
Period
|
Testing
capacity as per MOH
(No
of daily tests)
(a)
|
Worldodometer
|
Testing
capacity used elsewhere
(No
of daily cases)
(c)
|
|
|
(Average
number of daily tests)
(d)
|
Reference
period to compute average
|
|||
|
Pre-MCO
|
About
2,000
|
600
|
1
– 18 Mac (b)
|
1,400
|
|
Late March
|
7,000
|
3,200
|
Last
week Mac
|
3,800
|
|
Mid April
|
16,500
|
3,800
|
13
– 19 Apr
|
12,700
|
|
Early May
|
26,500
|
8,900
|
1
week of May
|
17,600
|
Notes
a) All the tests here refer to the PCR tests
b) 10,944 cumulative tests were reported on 18 Mac so assuming that these were all done in the first 18 days of March, we have about 600 per day. In reality, the number of daily tests would be lower as the cumulative tests also included those done in Feb and late Jan when the first case surfaced.
c) This is equal to the testing capacity minus the average number of daily tests i.e. (a) minus (d)
d) Worldodometer provides a cumulative number of tests every day so the daily numbers are derived ones.
In the past, MOH had indicated that some of the testing capacity has been used to re-test patients e.g.
- Testing and re-testing those under quarantine (at least 2 tests per person)
- Re-testing of those who have recovered prior to their discharge
- ???
Looking at the numbers from the table, the conclusion is that only about 1/3 of the additional daily testing capacity has been used for testing new cases. Can anyone from the medical profession or better knowledge about the workings of MOH explain how the balance is deployed?
Considering that the number of cases under treatment peaked in early April and has been declining since then, we can conclude that it has not gone for testing those who recovered and prior to their discharge.
One explanation I can think of is that the number of people under quarantine has increased substantially. Unfortunately, I don’t have the full quarantine figures. The only ones I have are about the Returnees as shown below.
Date Cum Returnees under quarantine
19 April 15,800
25 April 12,672
7 May 30,050
22 May 39,481
Based on this, the number of Returnees quarantined from 19 April to 22 May increased by 23,681 i.e. equivalent to only 1400 odd daily tests. Assuming 2 tests each where the first one would have been reported under "the new daily number of tests", this is equivalent to using up about 700 odd daily tests from the testing capacity used elsewhere i.e. it can only explain for about at best 15% of the capacity. [For those who slept during maths class, this is derived from 700 / (17600-12700) ]
So where did the balance testing capacity go? Remember that the testing for new cases (eg foreign workers, new clusters, etc) have been accounted for under the number of daily tests done.
Another mystery to be resolved.
Selamat Hari Raya
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Disclaimer: I am not an epidemiologist, healthcare worker,
pharmacist or staff in the Ministry of Health, but rather is someone with a
strong interest in numerical analysis.
The content is an attempt to understand what is happening in the battle
against Covid 19 from a data-based perspective. The opinions expressed here are
based on information extracted from readily available public sources but I do
not warrant its completeness or accuracy and should not be relied on as such.
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