KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 12 — Private hospitals will assist the public health care system to manage non-Covid and some Covid-19 patients based on individual hospital capacity and capability, the Association of Private Hospitals of Malaysia (APHM) said today.
APHM’s remarks came after their meeting with Muhyiddin Yassin, following the prime minister’s announcement that the government may enact emergency ordinances — under Malaysia’s state of emergency until August 1 — to enable the temporary takeover of land, buildings, or property of private hospitals; or to request the use of private hospital resources to treat Covid-19 patients.
Muhyiddin also said this morning that the emergency ordinances — legislation that can be enacted by the Executive without Parliamentary approval — could enable the government to obtain assistance from the private health care sector, including human resources, expertise, facilities, assets, testing laboratories, and utilities.
“Hope the medical insurance companies will assist their clients in getting reimbursement in private hospitals so that they are not burdened,” APHM president Dr Kuljit Singh added in his comments to CodeBlue.
All Covid-19 cases are currently treated in the public health care system. Muhyiddin said yesterday, when announcing a two-week Movement Control Order on six states from January 13 to 26, that the public health care system was at a “breaking point”, with more than 2,000 new Covid-19 cases recorded daily over the past seven days.
Muhyiddin added that the current bed occupancy rate in 15 Covid-19 hospitals is over 70 per cent currently, while intensive care unit (ICU) beds for Covid-19 patients were fully occupied in Kuala Lumpur Hospital and University Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC). The ICU bed occupancy rate for Covid-19 patients has reached 83 per cent in Sungai Buloh Hospital.
Besides that, the ICU bed occupancy rate for coronavirus patients in five states — Perak, Selangor, Melaka, Terengganu, and Sarawak — has exceeded 70 per cent.
Bernama quoted Health Minister Dr Adham Baba as saying earlier today that the Ministry of Health (MOH) has decided, since last January 1, to place asymptomatic and mild Covid-19 patients (Stage 1 and 2) in home quarantine with monitoring by health workers.
MOH will determine home quarantine if a person infected with Covid-19 lives in a sufficiently large home with rooms for self-isolation, and if the person’s household understands quarantine and isolation. Tests will be done on the tenth day of home quarantine to check if a person no longer has the coronavirus.
