'Not necessary to wear face masks in public unless you have symptoms'

CORONAVIRUS | Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah has reminded the public that it is not necessary to wear face masks unless you have the symptoms for Covid-19 such as flu or cough.

“I would like to emphasise here again, face masks are to protect healthcare workers when they are dealing with patients.

“In public, you do not need to wear face masks unless you have symptoms of runny nose or cough, so it is not necessary for us to wear face masks, unless there is an indication for you to wear face masks,” he said in a press conference in the Health Ministry headquarters in Putrajaya today.

He was responding to a reporter who had asked about netizens complaining about being barred from grocery stores and markets for not wearing face masks.

Meanwhile, Hisham also revealed that the ministry has added six more hospitals to be turned into a “hybrid” hospital to treat Covid-19 and other emergency cases.

They are also trying to include two more university hospitals as well as the army hospital, he said.

On top of that, the ministry is also in the process of acquiring 450 new ventilators today - 100 from local vendors and another 350 from China.

Yesterday, he said the ministry had identified 26 hospitals focusing on treating Covid-19.

He had also said they had prepared 925 ventilators for Covid-19 patients but was still in need of 500 more.

Hisham (photo) said today that the ministry has also engaged with private hospitals to see whether it is possible for some of the non-Covid-19 cases to be referred to private hospitals.

Apart from that, several NGOs have come forward and are willing to contribute a pool of specialists, he said, such as the Malaysian Medical Association and the Malaysian Society of Anaesthesiologists.

The director-general also revealed that currently, the ministry has 18 laboratories plus five private ones running the screening tests for Covid-19 and they have a capacity of 3,500 tests a day.

“Next week, we can do 7,000 tests a day. In April, we expect to be able to do 16,000 tests a day,” he said, adding that they are planning to train several other labs to run the tests as well.

Hisham also explained that there are typically five stages of patients who come into the hospital, where stage one is positive for Covid-19 but asymptomatic, while stage two is positive and mild symptomatic.

Patients from these two stages will not be admitted into the hospital but will instead be placed in the ministry’s quarters which have been converted to quarantine centres.

Stage three patients have pneumonia, he said, while stage four has pneumonia and is in need of oxygen. Finally, stage five has pneumonia and is need of tubing and ventilation.

The Health Ministry today announced two new deaths related to Covid-19, bringing the total deaths in Malaysia to 10.

There were also 123 new positive cases of Covid-19 as of 12pm today. There are now a total of 1,306 cases in the country. - Mkini