Page 158 - MALAYSIA HEALTH SECTOR RESPONSE TO COVID-19 PANDEMIC: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE FIELD

Financial aids

The Sarawak Heart Centre, being the next laboratory catering for the dense
southern zone, received RM1 million funding from SDMC to increase its
capacity from 100 tests/day to 500 tests/day . This mainly involved the
15
purchasing of assets such as automated extraction machines as well as new
RT-PCR machines.
Due to this increased testing, the reagent stocks in the state declined
rapidly. Measures were made to estimate further needs and requests for
funding for purchasing new stock. Aside from MOH Malaysia’s funding, the
Sarawak State Health Department also received funding from SDMC to
purchase reagents, viral transport media, and swab .
15

Molecular laboratory in Limbang Hospital
In October 2020, due to the sudden increase in the number of COVID-19
cases nationwide, it was clear that strategies have to be put into place to
increase Sarawak's testing capacity further. This seemed the best time to
put forth the proposal for a molecular laboratory running COVID-19 tests in
Limbang Hospital, one of the minor specialist hospitals in the northern zone
15
in Sarawak . Bordered by Brunei on both sides, hospitals such as Limbang
and Lawas were facing problems in sending samples to the nearest hospital
15
running the tests, which was Miri Hospital . The most recent active case
detection done by Lawas District Health Office, amounting to about 1,000
samples, had to be flown using the Flying Doctor Service (FDS) helicopter to
15
Miri, the transportation cost RM17,000 in total . Had there be a laboratory
in Limbang, these samples would have just been sent directly to Limbang
from Lawas, thus averting the large amount of money that had to be spent
on transport.

In preparation for the possible upcoming state election, Sarawak State
Health Department had also prepared a proposal on increasing the capacity
15
of testing from the current 2,300 tests/day to 5,000 tests/day . This
included the estimation of upgrading current testing facilities, increment of
assets, human resource needs, and reagent. With the approval of this
proposal sometime in the early 2021, it was hoped that laboratories in this
state would be at their best preparedness by the time of the election. The
average turnaround time (TAT) for the test result was between 24-48 hours.
With the proposed upgrades, it was aimed that an average TAT of 24 hours

122 LABORATORY RESPONSES TO THE THIRD COVID-19 WAVE IN MALAYSIA
156