THERE is no need to close the Penang and Sarawak general hospitals because the infected Covid-19 healthcare workers have been isolated, said Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

“When a staff tests positive, we will do active case detection where close contacts and family members will be screened and tested.

“Those tested positive will be isolated,” said the health director-general at his daily Covid-19 briefing in Putrajaya today.

He said the hospital areas where the staff had frequented would also be sanitised and disinfected.

“Take Teluk Intan Hospital for instance. We just shifted the department operations to another area and sanitised the whole department and other common areas.

“There is no need to close the entire hospital as the infection was from the community and not from the hospital itself,” he added. 

To date, none of the infected healthcare workers have contracted the virus from working in the ICU or Covid-19 wards, said Noor Hisham.

He said one indicator to close an entire area would be whether there was a surge in cases, which there wasn’t in the cases of healthcare workers.

Noor Hisham was responding to public concerns on whether the two hospitals should be shut down as several of its staff had tested positive for Covid-19.

Earlier today, the Sarawak government also dismissed calls for the Sarawak General Hospital to be locked down after about 50 staff tested positive for Covid-19. – April 29, 2020.