KUALA LUMPUR – The government does not plan to set up special hospitals to treat Covid-19 patients, said Health Minister, Khairy Jamaluddin Abu Bakar.
On the contrary, the government plans to maintain the existing hospitals to treat the infection, fully, or in hybrid at all states.
“I cannot say for how long, but we hope the hospital admission rate will drop further.
“Thus, hybrid hospitals, where part of the wards are taken over to manage Covid-19 treatment can be reserved into normal hospitals,” he said during an aural questions and answers session at the Dewan Rakyat today, answering the Member of Parliament of Kapar (PKR), Datuk Abdullah Sani, who requested the government to explain its plan to set up permanent hospitals for Covid-19 with sufficient equipment at all states to avoid infecting other patients.
On a relevant development, the Ministry of Health (MOH) has set up a National Quick Response Task Force to mobilise healthcare workers to states with an increment of Covid-19 cases.
The team would reduce the work burden of frontliners. For instance, 233 frontliners have been sent to Penang, 156 to Kedah and 102 to Sabah.
“When we face an increment of modular bed capacity at the intensive care unit (ICU) or field hospitals, it requires additional work and I have instructed for a National Quick Response Task Force to be set up.
“These healthcare workers will go under rotation and go to states with surge of cases to ensure that the frontliners are not overworked or suffer fatigue when the situation gets out of hand due to the additional workload,” he said in reply to the additional question from the Kulai MP (PH), Teo Nie Ching who wanted to know if the government plans to increase the number of healthcare workers to treat Covid-19 at the hospitals.
Meanwhile, Khairy said that RM593 million have been spent by MOH in these 2 years for additional equipment to treat Covid-19, including, additional ICU beds, ventilators and corpse containers. -MalaysiaGazette
