THE critical situation at the Kuala Lumpur Hospital (HKL) could have been avoided if the Find, Test, Trace, Isolate and Support (FTTIS) system was used extensively early on to detect possible Covid-19 patients, healthcare experts said.

News of full Covid-19 wards causing a backlog in the emergency and trauma department where a patient had to be treated on the floor, is a sign that Putrajaya needs to upgrade its Covid-19 management strategy, said Galen Centre for Health and Social Policy chief executive officer Azrul Mohd Khalib.

“Policy makers, especially politicians, need to realise that the strategy used in managing the Covid-19 situation in the country is outdated. It needs to be upgraded.

“It should be guided with mitigation approach and not elimination approach. More people need to be tested and detected earlier to make sure they get the treatment they deserve,” he said.

Azrul added that the government had been reminded several times that Malaysia could become like India or the United States in its early days of the pandemic, if mass testing and intervention were not performed early. 

Yesterday, HKL director Dr Heric Corray responded to social media posts by doctors about the dire situation at the HKL emergency department.

Corray said bed occupancy at the hospital had increased during the current phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, with many patients coming in at category 4. 

His statement came after HKL doctors posted on social media that the emergency department had insufficient beds to accommodate the increasing number of patients.

They had also said the hospital’s eight wards were full, and they were in need of ventilators and oxygen tanks.

Azrul said success in controlling the Covid-19 virus depended more on the level of public awareness rather than the use of movement-control orders.

Ordering people to “stay at home” was a simplistic strategy that has has proven to be detrimental as not only has the MCO failed to control the virus spread, but has also caused people to lose jobs and income.

What should have taken place, besides stay at home orders, is more widespread testing to quickly identify infected people.

Instead, the low test rate reduced their chances to receive further screening and proper treatment. 

“This is one of the reasons why more and more Covid-19 patients are affected and hospitalised in categories 4 and 5, hence causing the intensive care units and emergency department to become increasingly overcrowded,” Azrul said.

Testing had been at around 100,000 daily in early June, but has since dropped to around 70,000 to 80,000, without any clear explanation other than director-general of health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah saying that private laboratories were not working at full capacity.

A former high-ranking officer at the Health Ministry also said the FTTIS system could have changed, or at least mitigated, the current scenario.

“I want to be fair to the government and I am not going to point fingers or to score political brownie points. The situation now is beyond expectation. Not just at HKL but other government hospitals.

“I agree with the lockdown but it is underpowered (as a lone strategy). It must be accompanied with FTTIS as well as speeding up the vaccination programme. 

“We need to ramp up vaccination programme and at the same time trace and isolate individuals quickly,” he said, requesting anonymity.

Kuala Lumpur has been recording high numbers of daily Covid-19 cases and on June 29, recorded 1,361 infections, the highest in the capital since the onset of the pandemic. Today, it reported 616 new cases.

Today, Health Minister Dr Adham Baba said the current usage of patient beds in the Klang Valley, including repurposed beds in hospitals, has now reached more than 85%.

This has been caused by unexpected high referral rate to the ministry’s hospitals in the Klang Valley, and among steps to address the situation is to further expand the outsourcing of non-Covid-19 patients to private hospitals to free up beds in HKL.

Trained cardiothoracic surgeon Dr Farouk Musa feels Malaysia was not prepared to face the pandemic at such a magnitude.

The Monash University Malaysia academic said Putrajaya has had missteps with some policies, such as limiting implementation of the vaccination programme to the government healthcare system only.

He said this has stretched the capabilities of government hospitals.

“We could have avoided overcrowding hospitals if we had used proper policy. For example, the vaccination programme, it is only the government that can carry out the process. They should have allowed private hospitals to also provide the services.

“There is nothing wrong in allowing people who can pay to get the vaccine of their choice at private hospitals. By allowing general practitioners to provide this service, it will ramp up the immunisation process.

“I believe many people would feel more comfortable to visit their own GPs to get vaccinated and this would somehow spur the vaccination process in our quest to attain herd immunity,” he said. – July 4, 2021.