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MOH to establish Covid-19 Assessment Centre to rank patients’ illness severity

Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah speaks during a press conference in Putrajaya on January 19, 2021. — Picture by Miera Zulyana
Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah speaks during a press conference in Putrajaya on January 19, 2021. — Picture by Miera Zulyana

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 21 — The Health Ministry has decided to establish a Covid-19 Assessment Centre that will categorise patients by symptom severity in a bid to take some strain of the country’s public healthcare system.

During a press conference today, Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said Covid-19 patients will be placed according to their risk of becoming severely or critically ill.

He added that details will be ironed out later this week, following discussions with the private sector.

“We are looking into coordinating the public and the private sector through a Covid-19 Assessment Centre. All cases will be assessed in the centre, and as I said, once they have been assessed, whether, for example, low-risk groups and young-patients, (they) can be actually monitored at home.

“Then we will look into how they can be monitored at home using MySejahtera and we rope in the general practitioners as well to assist MoH to look into how we can monitor patients at home,” he said.

Dr Noor Hisham also said there are ongoing discussions about integrating public and private facilities, such as for non-Covid-19 patients to be moved from government hospitals to private hospitals.

According to him, training may also be conducted for both public and private sector healthcare professionals to improve on infection control and more.

“More importantly, under the Emergency Ordinance for Covid-19, we have already overridden the Annual Practicing Certificate (APC), which designates where you are going to practice (for the year). Now we have done away with that,” he added.

He said the move now allows for healthcare professionals to freely move between private and government hospitals, according to where their services are needed at the time.

“We have a common enemy, that is Covid-19,” he said.

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