KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 13 — Malaysia’s 30,390 active Covid-19 patients currently occupy 91.4 per cent of beds across hospitals and low-risk quarantine and treatment centres nationwide.
According to Dr Suresh Kumar, head of medicine and infectious disease consultant from Sungai Buloh Hospital, the current number of hospital beds nationwide is 6,379, while the number of beds in 105 low-risk quarantine and treatment centres (PKRC) are 26,891, totalling 33,270 beds across hospitals and PKRC. Malaysia has 120 Covid-19 screening and 50 Covid-19 treating hospitals nationwide.
Meanwhile, from the 6,379 beds, 466 beds are for the intensive care unit (ICU), of which 40.7 per cent is occupied, as 190 patients are currently being treated in the ICU as of yesterday.
Only five per cent of the 1,583 ventilators are being used currently, as only 80 coronavirus patients were on ventilators as reported yesterday.
During a webinar organised by Edunity Foundation and G25 Malaysia, Dr Suresh added that the proportion of Stage Four and Stage Five Covid-19 patients requiring supplemental oxygen and ventilator support has exponentially increased, which has caused a delay in the admission of such severe cases to Sungai Buloh Hospital.
For the third wave of the Malaysian epidemic, the government has increased the number of ventilators by 27.8 per cent from 1,239 ventilators during the second wave. The number of beds for the PKR has also been increased by 23,212 beds.
The number of treating hospitals has also been increased by 10 hospitals while the total laboratories to process Covid-19 samples has been increased by 21 labs, as compared to the second wave. There are currently 66 laboratories processing Covid-19 tests.
Although the government has managed to increase the number of beds for Covid-19 patients by 38.7 per cent from 4,599 during the second wave to 6,379 beds during the third wave, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin last Monday said that the health system is currently under tremendous pressure.
Muhyiddin also said that MOH facilities are no longer able to accomodate an increasing number of Covid-19 cases with over 2,000 new infections every day.
