SARAWAK State Reform Party president Lina Soo has suggested that the state disaster management committee isolated people infected or suspected to be infected with the 2019 novel coronavirus at the Rajah Charles Brooke Memorial Hospital (RCBM) near Kuching city.

The suggestion appeared to be in response to Muara Tuang assemblyman Idris Buang’s proposal to build a facility specifically to accommodated the infected.

Soo said the committee should make the 95-year leprosy hospital the designated medical centre for such cases in Kuching and Samarahan.

Named after Sarawak’s second white rajah Charles Brooke, it was built to specifically treat leprosy patients who were resettled nearby.

The hospital is now generally an “outpatient hospital” for people in the area.

Being away from populous centres and equipped to deal with infectious disease, the hospital is ideal to treat cases of the coronavirus, Soo said.

The World Health Organisation has declared a global emergency over the deadly viral outbreak that has killed at least 213 people in China.

“The hospital is still operational, with a few residents who had been cured of the disease but who still live there as they have been isolated from their communities and cannot care for themselves.

“RCBM hospital still stands today with a ward and an outpatient clinic, and it can instantly function as a virus hospital to manage the coronavirus threat,” Soo said.

The existing long-term patients, she added, could be temporarily housed at the nearby Home for the Aged.

She said Sarawak has to boost its vigilance and disease surveillance as its hospitals are already overcrowded and lacking the necessary medical equipment and protective gear.

Idris had said that those exposed to the disease or have been infected should not be placed at the Sarawak general hospitals where they are a risk to other patients and visitors to the hospital.

Due to the urgency of the matter, he suggested turning cargo containers into a temporary makeshift isolation units “far away” from the general hospital.

The Sarawak general hospital’s isolation unit is not within the main block of the hospital.

The isolation unit is a cluster of single-storey building within a fenced up area behind the hospital block. – January 31, 2020.