Brought-in-dead: 80pct not diagnosed with Covid-19 before death

 

A majority of Covid-19 brought-in-dead (BID) cases were those who had not been diagnosed with the virus before death.

Many were also foreign citizens, said Health deputy director-general (public health) Dr Chong Chee Kheong.

BID cases refer to people who died before they could be brought into a hospital.

Speaking during a press conference for selected media today, Chong showed that BID cases had spiked in the past month to over 100 a week.

The situation began worsening towards the end of May and the death toll has been rising ever since. A significant portion of Covid-19 BID cases is happening in Selangor.

Malaysia saw a record 142 BID cases in the week of July 18-24. More than half (74) were from Selangor.

This week is not over yet but already 96 BID cases have been recorded.

“We notice that 80 percent of them (BID cases) were never diagnosed to have Covid-19.

“In other words, there is a group of people who either have no access to diagnosis or for reasons of their own, are not coming forward to be tested.

“And we found that a big proportion of them were also non-Malaysians,” he explained.

Chong said that the rest of the BID cases were those identified as positive patients.

“There is still 20 percent of them who have the disease but come in late.

“They have been diagnosed positive, they are at home and some of them come late but some of them fail to come to our (healthcare) places,” he added.

Utilise virtual CAC

Chong, who heads the Health Ministry’s Greater Klang Valley Special Task Force, urged all to come forward for Covid-19 tests, monitoring and vaccinations.

He reminded those in the Klang Valley to utilise the virtual Covid-19 Assessment Centre (CAC) function if they test positive for the virus.

This was to ensure effective monitoring by the authorities.

Chong also urged employers to get their staff vaccinated against Covid-19 as soon as possible.

“All the employees who are symptomatic, with signs, must be tested.

“And we also encourage the employers to provide access to general practitioner (GP) panel clinics for the employees.

“Because sometimes the employees do not have this benefit (and) they have to pay to go to the GP clinics and because of that, they may delay seeking treatment early,” he stressed.

Chong also proposed the use of saliva-based self-test kits, which can be performed at home.

To date, three such kits have been approved.

1. Salixium (91.4 percent sensitivity; 100 percent specificity)
2. Gmate (90.9 percent sensitivity; 100 percent specificity)
3. Beright (90.1 percent sensitivity; 99.3 percent specificity)

These test kits are not authoritative tools to confirm Covid-19 but results must be reported through the MySejahtera application.

An RT-PCR test remains the diagnostic test.   - Mkini