'Don’t work in silos' - Health DG wants better Covid-19 teamwork between states, federal

COVID-19 | After calling on state governments to leave public health intervention to Putrajaya, Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah has now urged for better collaboration between the two entities in combating Covid-19.

This came amidst a public spat between the Selangor Task Force for Covid-19 (STFC) and the ministry over data sharing and coordination.

In recent days, Selangor has been registering the second-highest number of daily new cases after Sabah. As of 12 noon today, 132 of the 860 new local transmissions were recorded in the state.

Asked today if the ministry welcomed the Selangor government’s own targeted testing initiatives, the top official sidestepped the question.

Instead, he called for better cooperation and stressed that public health was a federal matter.

“We would like to see the state work with our state Health Department. Work with our state Health Department and see how we can coordinate the activities rather than working in silos.

“I am sure our state Health Department will be more than happy to collaborate and cooperate with the state administration to look into how we can solve the issue.

“But health is under Act 342 (Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act 1988), and that is under the federal Ministry of Health,” he said during his daily Covid-19 briefing.

Yesterday, the STFC told Malaysiakini that its Covid-19 response efforts had been negatively affected after the ministry stopped sharing granular data sets with it in early October.

In response, Noor Hisham explained it had to decline to fulfil requests for “raw data” to avoid conflicting interpretations.

To standardise and centralise data analysis, he said Covid-19 case data is typically channelled from states to the ministry. The analysed data set is then released from the ministry to state departments.

[More to follow] - Mkini