Prime Minister Hun Sen blamed health officials for not providing enough Covid-19 rapid test kits to provinces along the borders. In a special address today, he told the Ministry of Health to provide the kits to them immediately.

“I am speaking with responsibility to the nation. I am fully responsible. Doing rapid testing needs those kits. Beside rapid test, we will also perform another Polymerase Chain Reaction [PCR] test with big machine available in some [major] provinces like Siem Reap and Battambang [to confirm the results],” he said.

He told health ministry secretary of state York Sambath who is in charge of procurement to provide the test kids as requested by relevant authorities.

“I told them to buy the kits for use, not to keep. Each province needs at least 10,000 rapid test kits. We have more than one million rapid test kits in the warehouse and another one million will arrive soon. Another 300,000 kits are in our strategic warehouse,” he said.