COVID: MOH needs two weeks to prepare, so stay at home - Health DG

PUTRAJAYA: The Health Ministry (MOH) needs a period of two weeks to make the necessary preparation to contain the COVID-19 transmission in the country.

Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said among the preparations was to stock up on equipment and medicine as well as reviewing the layouts to further increase the wards and intensive care units (ICU) capacity for COVID-19 patients.

Therefore, he appealed to all Malaysians to assist the ministry by imposing self and family restriction for two weeks in order to break the infection chain and allow hospitals to have more room to treat the increasing number of patients.

"The rising infection now is due to being exposed to activities within two weeks. We have not seen any activities after Hari Raya Aidilfitri.

"Before Hari Raya Aidilfitri, there was exposure to the virus either through movement or gathering activities in shopping malls and public places," he said at a joint press conference with Senior Minister (Security Cluster) Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob here, today.

Dr Noor Hisham said several actions had been taken by the MOH to address the recent increase in COVID-19 cases, including identifying temporary facilities to accommodate critical patients.

At present, the use of ICU beds nationwide has reached 91 per cent while in the Klang Valley alone is 113 per cent.

Dr Noor Hisham added that the MOH had identified certain spaces, such as the daily treatment observation wards, to be converted into ICUs and added 27 beds to the field ICU at Kepala Batas Hospital.

The ministry had also asked private hospitals to increase their ICU capacity to 124 beds compared to 104 previously, besides utilising Section 3 of the Emergency Ordinance to take over new hospitals that have not been used such as the Cyberjaya Hospital and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) Children's Specialist Hospital to treat COVID-19 patients.

In addition, Dr Noor Hisham said other strategies included creating a Unified Command Centre responsible for looking at the integration of ICU beds, postponing elective surgeries and referring non-COVID-19 surgeries to private hospitals.

He explained that the MOH also used the outsourcing method, namely to refer non-COVID-19 cases to private hospitals and turning public facilities into COVID-19 Low-Risk Quarantine and Treatment Centres (PKRC).

However, Dr Noor Hisham stressed that increasing the number of beds and ICU was not the absolute solution to address the pandemic, and only public health action could flatten the COVID-19 infection curve.

"The virus does not move, humans do. So help us and stay at home. The virus will multiply in the lungs resulting in mutations if there is a lot of reproduction," he said.

-- BERNAMA