The government intends to further lower the ceiling price of Covid-19 self-test kits, after earlier setting the ceiling retail price at RM19.90 and wholesale price at RM16, said Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin.

“In the past two days, I held discussions with the Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry to look into further lowering the price (of self-test kits) in the future...

“(This is) seeing as the need for such self-test kits are seen as a new normal which will support the country’s recovery process when more economic sectors and social activities are allowed after this,” Khairy said.

He was speaking during his winding-up speech in the Dewan Rakyat today.

Khairy (above) was originally given 30 minutes for his speech but due to a large number of MPs who interrupted him seeking further clarification and information, his speech ran about 10 minutes into the lunch break.

Previously, Pakatan Harapan urged Putrajaya to further lower the ceiling price for Covid-19 self-test kits as they believe RM19.90 is not low enough.

They suggested that the kits should be sold for lower than RM10 each and that the ideal price for a unit would be around RM5.

During his speech today, Khairy also responded positively to a suggestion from Kelvin Yii (Harapan-Bandar Kuching) to offer rebates to incentivise people to report their results from the self-test kits.

This is because many people who tested negative from the self-test kits do not report their results to the Health Ministry via the MySejahtera app, which ends up skewing the positivity rate.

“This is quite a serious problem. For those who report the results, the tendency is for them to report when it is positive but when it is negative, many do not report, so that is why we have problems with the denominator,” Khairy said.

He said the positivity rate is now derived from the total number of RT-PCR tests, RTK antigen laboratory tests and RTK self-test kits.

“Currently (the positivity rate is 9.95 percent) but we don’t know the true denominator because we don’t know how many people have taken the self-test kits.

“So, I like the suggestion from Bandar Kuching for us to give rebates to those who have reported their results. That is perhaps the only way for us to get a higher rate of self-reports,” Khairy said.

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