COVID-19 patients from the Kuala Lumpur Hospital (HKL) will be transferred to other facilities to free up capacity for non-coronavirus cases, said Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

“Light Covid-19 cases from HKL will be transferred to the field hospital at the Malaysia Agro Exposition Park Serdang.

“Severe cases will be moved to the Sg Buloh Hospital,” the director-general of health said at his daily Covid-19 briefing in Putrajaya today.

He said the purpose was to allow HKL to focus on treating other patients.

“Although we have seven Covid-19 hospitals and 33 hybrid hospitals, our medical services are still running and we still carry out emergency surgeries and treat cancer patients.

“Only the elective surgeries have been postponed or moved to other hospitals,” said Noor Hisham.

He said that the Health Ministry could afford to transfer Covid-19 patients out of HKL now as the numbers have fallen to a manageable level.

“The usage of the intensive care unit and ventilators has also fallen,” he added.

Noor Hisham was responding to a question on whether hospitals will begin reducing working hours for Covid-19 frontliners following the drop in number of active cases to 1,758.

Noor Hisham had said previously Malaysia is now in the recovery phase after passing the peak of infections on April 3 with the highest number of cases in a day, at 217.

As of today, there were 94 new infections reported in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of cases to 5,945. – April 29, 2020.