KUALA LUMPUR, 20 Feb: Pool testing techniques can be used to help reduce the cost of testing in a population with a low or very low prevalence of Covid-19 infections.
However Director-General of Health, Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah says, this technique might also increase the turnaround time in getting a test result of the samples taken.
“The increase of a turnaround time occurs as a result of test-positive pool samples that will need to be re-tested individually again,” he said in his Facebook posting earlier today.
Explaining further, Dr Noor Hisham told that pool testing may also dilute the viral RNA concentration of individual samples.
This situation he said, may potentially lead to some false-negative results of the samples tested.
“We must understand the advantage and limitation of each approach to optimise the testing capacity in our facilities,” he added. -DayakDaily
