Healthcare workers perform the intubation procedure on a Covid-19 patient in Hospital Serdang’s ICU. — Picture by Shafwan Zaidon
KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 7 — The Association of Private Hospitals Malaysia (APHM) said it is ready to support public healthcare services in case of a surge in Covid-19 cases.
Its president, Datuk Dr Kuljit Singh said while the number of Covid-19 patients in normal wards and intensive care units (ICU) is currently low, private hospitals are ready in the event of another spike, similar to last year.
“Private hospitals are ready for any increase in the number of Covid-19 patients like what we experienced in the middle of last year.
“Though treatment of Covid-19 in private hospitals is largely out of the pocket of the patients as not all insurance would cover this condition completely, private hospitals were filled to the maximum of the allotted beds both in normal and ICU wards during the Delta wave last year,” he said in a statement this morning.
Dr Kuljit said currently, private hospitals are functioning per normal, treating non-Covid-19 patients as well as taking part in flood relief programmes, including providing temporary relief centres and administering Covid-19 booster doses.
“We hope that in 2022, private hospitals can continuously support the government in treating some public hospital patients using the similar formula of decanting during the peak of the pandemic.
“This will assist thousands of patients in a month who have been waiting for treatment in the public healthcare facilities,” he said.
Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic as well as the influx of cases from August to November last year, private hospitals had been extensively carrying out Covid-19 testing, participating in vaccination at mega vaccination centres (PPVs), treating Covid-19 patients and attending to non-Covid patients through the decanting exercise.
Yesterday, Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said a Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered (SEIR) epidemiological prediction model has projected that Malaysia could record 30,000 Covid-19 cases daily by the end of March should rate of infection (R0) rise to 1.6.
This would eclipse Malaysia’s highest single-day total of 24,599 recorded in August last year.