DG Hisham: Hospitals Can’t Handle COVID-19 Patients Soon If Cases Keep Hitting 4 Digits Daily

The situation in Malaysia the past month or so has been very worrying, especially after the number of COVID-19 cases kept hitting the 1,000 mark consistently.

Because of this, many Malaysians are worried that eventually, hospitals won’t be able to cope with the rising number of cases.

True enough, our Health Director-General Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah has addressed this issue during one of his daily press conferences recently.

Flattening the curve

Hospital Sg Buloh is now a COVID-19 treatment facility.

According to Bernama, hospitals and health facilities in the country may not be able to accommodate more COVID-19 patients if the daily number of infections reaches 1,755 cases with an infectivity rate of R-Naught (R0) of 1.5 within 10 days.

To curb this from happening, Dr Noor Hisham said that the ministry would continue to strengthen public health capacities to reduce infectivity rate to below 1.0.

"Earlier we saw the number of new daily cases reported touched four figures on Oct 24 (1,240), Nov 4 (1,032 cases) and Nov 6 had 1,755 cases.”

"However, after that (period) the number was less than we expected (with the cases returning to three digits) and if the number continues to decrease we will be able to flatten the curve," he told a press conference on COVID-19 on Wednesday (11 November).

He added that at this stage, we would need to prevent, not control the spread of the virus at this infectious stage.

The infection rate at Peninsula Malaysia is growing rapidly and even beating out Sabah when we combine the number of cases in the Klang Valley and Negeri Sembilan recently.

We need to do our part in order to help break the chain and flatten the curve.

Stay at home as much as you can, and if you’re heading out don’t forget to wear a facemask correctly, practise social distancing, and frequently sanitise or wash your hands.