Young Covid-19 deaths came in too late to be saved - Health DG

CORONAVIRUS | Covid-19 death cases that involved younger age bracket patients mostly came to the hospital too late, says Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

The Health director-general revealed this today when elaborating on the mortality trend of cases linked to the virus which has to date has cost 50 lives in the country.

"We also have death cases involving young patients like the one aged 34 and the youngest was 27. But (this was because) they came at a very late stage.

"They came when they were already at stage 3 or 4 (of a Covid-19 infection), where they already have pneumonia and need assistance to breathe.

"And among these (who came late), there are those whom we could not save," he told a press conference in Putrajaya.

Noor Hisham had previously said that there were five stages of a Covid-19 infection. The early stages of the virus infection are stage 1, where a patient is positive but does not show any symptoms and stage 2 when a person is positive but only shows mild symptoms.

Those at stage 3 develop some form of pneumonia while those at stage 4 are those already suffering breathing difficulties and in need of oxygen support.

The next stage, or stage 5, are patients who can no longer breathe on their own and have to be intubated and put on ventilators.

During the press conference today, Noor Hisham said that the ministry had a team led by its former deputy director-general Dr Christopher Lee to review all Covid-19 death cases to find useful trends.

Besides coming in for treatment at a late stage, the team found that there were two other high-risk groups.

"There are many (who died of the virus) who have diabetes, hypertension and low immunity. This made up about 67 percent of the total number of death cases," he said.

The other group at risk, Noor Hisham added, was those from the very senior age group.

As of noon today, MOH recorded a total of 50 Covid-19 deaths, while the number of positive cases rose to 3,116.

[More to follow] - Mkini