GEORGE TOWN – Medical practitioners are urging the public stay at home and not flout the movement control order (MCO) as intensive care units (ICUs) to treat critical Covid-19 cases at government hospitals in Penang are now bursting at the seams.
The wards are now running at full capacity with no more additional beds. They have had to reject Covid-19 ICU cases from private hospitals.
Head of Penang Hospital’s infectious disease unit, Dr Chow Ting Soo, warned that the virus is spreading faster and more intensely in the community, rather than in clusters or at remand centres.
“This wave is fast and furious,” she told The Vibes. “Complacency has led to the rise in Covid-19 cases.”
People should be aware that masks must be worn even when others visit their homes or if they are in an office in the presence of others.
“People are yearning to go back to the norm and are taking chances thinking that they are not so ‘lucky’ to catch the disease.
“They also trust that their friends and relatives are Covid-19 negative, so when they meet at home, no one wears a mask,” she said.
She strongly suggests that people stay at home and not visit anyone at all, even though the MCO standard operating procedures (SOPs) allows visitations in small groups.
“Try not to ask to visit anyone as they might find it difficult to say no and, hence, they reluctantly receive you as a guest.
“If you must, wear a mask and keep the visits short, with no eating or drinking as the home is a confined space, which is dangerous.”
Younger patients on the rise
She also took to Facebook to remind people that younger people are now filling up ICUs, too – many with severe Covid-19 symptoms.
“The worrying part is that cases without an apparent epidemiological link have been diagnosed positive.
“We cannot predict who is the index and where the source of infection stems from,” she wrote, adding that these people will likely bring the virus back to their parents or grandparents, who are house-bound.
A doctor at a Covid-19 ICU ward who does not want to be named told The Vibes that he is treating a frail septuagenarian woman for Covid-19 after she contracted the virus following a visit from her relatives.
“All we hear is to follow the SOPs or risk getting a summons, and so, people will claim they follow SOPs when they visit their relatives.
“However, once they arrive, they take off their masks to talk. And this is the same at the office – they chit-chat and eat with their colleagues with no care for social distancing or masks,” he said.
This week, more doctors who have concluded their duties in Covid-19 wards a few months back have been deployed again to aid with the surge of cases in Penang. – The Vibes, May 11, 2021
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