Employers urged to accept HSO, RO digital certs - Khairy

KLUANG: The Health Ministry (MOH) has urged all employers in the country to accept copies of digital certificates of the Home Surveillance and Observation (HSO) Order and Release Order (RO) to avoid congestion at COVID-19 Assessment Centres (CAC).

Health Minister, Khairy Jamaluddin, said this was due to many patients coming to the CAC because their employers declined to accept digital certificates but instead asked for a written copy.

He said a report to the National COVID-19 Quarantine and Low-risk Treatment Centre (PKRC) found that 30 to 50 per cent of cases at CACs were not for deteriorating health case assessment while undergoing home monitoring.

"As many as 90 per cent of the number were to obtain an HSO written notice. This causes an increase in the workload of MOH staff. They are supposed to make assessments for patients' conditions instead of writing HSO notices.

"After the isolation period ends, patients need to make a copy of the HSO digital certificate screenshot for employers and relevant parties," he said at a press conference at the CAC Simpang Renggam Health Clinic here today.

Khairy said that the public could lodge a complaint with the MOH if their employers declined to accept their HSO or RO digital certificates.

On the virtual CAC, Khairy said that as of Feb 23, it had monitored 361,283 active cases at home by detecting deteriorating conditions of COVID-19 patients nationwide through a health assessment tool.

"We are not asking questions for fun. When they answer the questions, we have a system to look for warning signs. If the warning signs are worrying, we will ask them to be physically present at the CAC," he said.

Therefore, he asked individuals who underwent isolation at home to answer questions on the MySejahtera application twice a day, as the average number of active cases who answered questions was only 55 per cent even though the MOH had set a target of at least 70 per cent.

He said it was important for the MOH to be able to detect high-risk cases that needed immediate treatment, thus reducing brought-in-dead (BID) cases.

He also said that from Feb 13 to 19, the number of isolation cases at home referred to PKRC was 0.4 per cent while those referred to hospitals were 0.2 per cent.

-- BERNAMA