Eight Chinese doctors arrive in Malaysia to help fight COVID-19

Dr Noor Hisham said he had already conducted a teleconferencing with the Chinese doctors and would discuss on various issues with them.

Some of them are from China’s National Health Commission in Guangdong, he said.

He added that they are specialised in different fields such as intensive care, infectious diseases and data analysis.

"So maybe they can share their expertise in Hubei (China), take a look at our studies and our hospital services and how we can improve our services," he told a daily press conference on COVID-19 developments here today.

Dr Noor Hisham said the doctors would go through the same quarantine process as others.

Meanwhile, he said, they were currently examining the COVID-19 strains namely A, B and C.

"We have been informed that in China it is strain B. Today we have done the isolation and culture of the virus at the IMR (Institute for Medical Research) and from that culture we compare the first and the second wave.

"… and if we look at the first wave, most of our patients, 16 of them are from Wuhan (China)," he said.

According to Dr Noor Hisham, it was found that the strain of the first wave was strain B, which is a similar strain in Wuhan.

“But in the second wave, Malaysians are involved, we find that the virus is also strain B, not C.

“Because they were many who returned from overseas, we may have imported cases and we will do more tests or virus isolation as well as virus culture and we will look at the whole genomic sequence of the virus," he said.

Dr Noor Hisham added that after the MOH has obtained the whole genomic sequence, they could then compare the first and second wave as well as imported cases whether from either the US or the UK.