COVID-19 | At his regular briefing on the national Covid-19 situation today, Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah highlighted some figures regarding various countries' efforts to test for the presence of the disease in its population.

“The testing rate per 1,000 population (in Malaysia) is comparable to other countries,” he said, as he quoted the Oxford Martin School’s numbers on testing and positivity rates for Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

However, a closer look at the figures compiled by the UK-based institution presents a less rosy picture of Malaysia’s Covid-19 situation.

Quoting the Oxford Martin School figures, which are available from the Our World in Data website, Noor Hisham said Malaysia has conducted 51.96 tests per 1,000 population with only 0.8 percent of those tests returning a positive result.

This meant that a Covid-19 case is ...