THE men’s psychiatric ward in Hospital Kuala Lumpur was ordered to close on Saturday after eight patients tested positive for Covid-19.

The ward had just reopened for about a week after a fortnight of closure, also due to a coronavirus outbreak.

A medical staff member, who did not want to be named, told The Malaysian Insight 56 employees in the psychiatric department staff had been identified as close contacts in the latest outbreak believed to have been spread by a patient who was admitted to the ward on July 1.

“The patient was referred to HKL from a private hospital and he had his RT-PCR test done on June 29. The result was negative. 

“When he came to the HKL emergency department on June 30, an RTK antigen test was done and the result was negative as well. He was admitted to the psychiatric ward on July 1.

“He was scheduled to have electroconvulsive therapy on July 5 so we had to do an RT-PCR test as it is part of the standard operating procedure. But then we did the test on July 2 and the resulton July 3 showed that he was Covid-19 positive,” said the source.

The medical staff the other patients in the ward were immediately screened for infection.

“We ran a test on all the 13 other patients in the male ward and the results of seven returned positive and three negative. The other three are still waiting for the results.

“The ward was closed on Saturday around 3pm,,” the source said, adding that no new patients will be admitted to the ward until further notice.

Meanwhile, the close contacts of the first infected patient were in the process of being screened, said the source, adding that 17 of them were doctors and specialists.

The source said the close contacts of the other seven patients had yet to be identified.

“This could be massive, this is already considered a cluster.”

Yesterday the Health Ministry had denied that the hospital had closed its wards because of a Covid-19 outbreak.

The hospital has two wards for men and one for women in need of psychiatric care. The source said the infected patients were housed in one of the wards while who who tested negative were in an isolation room, pending another test tomorrow.

The source said it is uncertain if the other unoccupied male ward would open for new admissions after sanitisation.

“We had just reopen a ward on June 28 after a two-week closure when four patients tested positive,” the source said.

Last week HKL also faced an influx of patients to the emergency ward, resulting in several patients having to be treated on the floor.

The Health Ministry subsequently took steps to free up beds in the hospital, including by referring non-Covid-19 patients to private hospitals. – July 5, 2021.