Page 55 - SARS-COV-2-laboratory-viral-outbreak-perspective-investigation-by-ICR-NIH-MY

As we go forward, the numbers (positive COVID-19

cases) now look good. However, we are still

worried about the possibilities of a second surge

of COVID-19 as we open up the economy, there

will be more human-to-human interaction. So, I

think we all need to be prepared for it. Going

forward, what are the major challenges we have

to foresee in laboratory services in terms of

preparing for a second surge?

Dr Arni: Well, going forward for a surge, we must make sure that all our laboratories are
fully stocked and able to carry out the COVID-19 tests immediately when there is a surge.
They should look into the quality of the testing. Quality of the testing is important, because
by doing so, whatever test results that we produce are reliable. We are already setting up the
quality committee to make sure that the laboratories comply with the standards and with the
quality assurance programme. We make sure that these laboratories also take part in the
quality assurance programmes in the future.

Other than that, we need to increase the capacity in those areas which we think we can by
opening up more laboratories, but these laboratories probably will aim for point-of-care
testing types rather than full molecular testing because it is not cost effective to have many
molecular laboratories. It is definitely not easy to maintain these molecular laboratories.