Sibu hospital bed number 'dynamic, not manipulated'

The Sarawak health department has refuted allegations that statistics on hospital bed use in Sibu were manipulated.

In a statement yesterday, Sarawak health director Dr Mohamed Sapian Mohamed said the number of available beds is dynamic and will change according to circumstances.

"The data (bed capacity) is dynamic, meaning there is an increase and decrease in the number of beds for Covid-19 treatment according to current needs, so the figure for total bed capacity will also change from time to time," he said.

As of yesterday, there were 275 people being treated for Covid-19 at the Sibu Hospital, he said.

"Sibu hospital has 642 beds and there are still 157 beds available," he said, adding that 52 trained contract nurses and 10 medical officers from the Peninsula would be deployed to the Sibu Hospital from Oct 5 to Dec 24 to overcome the shortage of manpower.

High vaccination rate

On Sept 29, health news website CodeBlue published a letter - which the website claims is authored by an anonymous doctor - claiming that the hospital bed usage rates for the Sibu hospital were being manipulated.

The writer said many Covid-19 patients have to wait several hours before being allocated a bed and that although the number of field ICU beds is being added, it was not supported by enough human resources.

Sarawak, despite its relatively high vaccination rate, is the only state with an obvious uptrend in hospitalisation of Covid-19 patients over the past two weeks.

The number of patients requiring intensive care reached record levels recently.

 - Mkini