The ministry will hold discussions with the relevant agencies regarding the implementation, says health DG

by S BIRRUNTHA/ pic by BERNAMA

THE Health Ministry (MoH) is looking into initiatives to introduce a two-shift system to reduce the congestion and the burden of staff in health clinics.

However, Health DG Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the system would only be implemented fully if there were additional staff intakes and equipment at the facility.

“There are several factors that need to be studied before the implementation can be made. If we use the existing policies, many may disagree because they need to work two shifts from morning to night, for example.

“So, before it can be implemented, we need to look at the human resources of the MoH and some of the implementation issues,” he said in his Covid-19 briefing yesterday.

Dr Noor Hisham added that MoH would hold discussions with the relevant agencies regarding the implementation.

On Covid-19 development, 41 new cases were recorded yesterday, involving 32 foreigners, six locals and three import cases.

Of the 32 locally transmitted cases involving foreigners, 14 cases were detected at the Akademi Imigresen Malaysia in Port Dickson, which involved detainees who were transferred there from the Bukit Jalil Immigration Depot.

The remaining 15 were from the Pedas cluster in Negri Sembilan and two from the cleaning services company cluster.

Meanwhile, among the six local cases involving Malaysians, one was an acute respiratory infection case at an old folks’ home in Kuala Selangor.

Three locals were found linked to close contacts of Covid-19 patients and the remaining two were detected from the tahfiz school screenings in Sabah, Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Melaka.

Dr Noor Hisham also said the ministry has detected a new Covid-19 cluster in an old folks’ home in Kuala Selangor involving five cases since May 17.

He added that the home’s 12 staff members and 26 residents have been screened and all tested negative.

“Active detections in the care centre are currently underway and preventive measures such as sanitisation and isolation process have also been taken,” he said.

Among the active cases yesterday, four were placed in the intensive care unit and none of them required respiratory aid.

The increase in new cases brought the current active cases to 973 and the country’s overall total to 8,494.

Similarly, 54 patients recovered, increasing the percentage of recovered cases to 87.1%, which equals to 7,400 as of yesterday.

No new deaths were recorded as the country’s death tally stood at 121.

Meanwhile, Dr Noor Hisham also said almost 3.7 million Malaysians have registered and are using the MySejahtera application within eight weeks of its operation nationwide.

He added that among MySejahtera’s most used functions by users are the Covid-19 hotspot tracker and self-assessment.

Additionally, he said many users also refer to the application for the latest statistics on Covid-19 in Malaysia, Asean countries, and around the world.

“The application has been receiving encouraging responses where in just 13 days, 119,837 business premises registered for the QR code and over 10 million overall registrations were recorded nationwide,” he added.

The MySejahtera app was introduced on June 1 and has been widely used by Malaysians to track information on Covid-19 since June 6.