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Laboratory Preparedness

The Virology Unit, IDRC, Institute for Medical Research (IMR), Ministry of Health
Malaysia is the National Reference Laboratory for viral infections especially for novel,
emerging and re-emerging viral Infections.

Back in 2009 or eleven years ago, we had a pandemic influenza outbreak. We had learned a
lot of lessons from it. We had decentralized molecular testing and at the same time we had
developed our own capacity to detect viral infections especially those of public health
importance including viral haemorrhagic fever such as Ebola, Marburg, Lassa, Crimean
Congo Haemorrhagic fever virus, novel coronaviruses, Yellow fever, West Nile Virus, Rift
Valley Virus, Rabies and others.

How do we go about it? We basically looked at the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Of
course, we don’t have the virus. We have the synthetic apex virus which we used as positive
control.

In late December 2019, there were rumours or news on the possible emergence of new
coronavirus in China. We revisited our standard operating procedure (SOP) for the detection
of coronavirus using pan-coronavirus reagents which could detect all coronaviruses. We were
not sure whether it can be of use for this new coronavirus.

Fortunately, the scientists from China had shared the full genome sequencing of COVID-19
in a common sharing database (GISAID and Genbank). IMR is the WHO National Influenza
Centre which enables us to access to the genomic materials. We have officers who are able to
design and synthesize primers and probes specific to COVID-19. This enabled us to order
reagents and it arrived quite soon at that point of time, within a week.