62-year-old latest death from Covid-19

By Xavier Kong

Update: The 77th death from Covid-19 was initially reported as a participant of the Sri Petaling tabligh event, but this was corrected in a later post on social media, stating that the deceased was actually a close contact case with an index patient.

ANOTHER death has been reported from Covid-19, bringing the death toll up to 77 from the pandemic that sweeps the world. According to Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah, the 62-year-old Malaysian had a history of heart disease, hypertension, and kidney disease.

There were also 134 new cases reported, bringing the total number of confirmed cases up to 4,817. There were 168 recoveries reported today, bringing the total to 2,276. Of the 2,464 patients still being treated, 66 are in the intensive care unit, and 36 are on ventilator support.

According to Dr Noor Hisham, a total of 69 sporadic cases have been found so far, with sporadic meaning they could not find any trace of contact between the patients and any high-risk or infected individuals.

“This means that the virus is in our communities,” he said, and called again for Malaysians to adhere to the Movement Control Order, which he said has brought positive effects towards the number of cases.

He also shared that the curve had been flattened, and the aim now is for the continued reduction of cases, hopefully to the point where no new cases emerge. Research is also a strong effort, with hopes for a vaccine within a year.

Regarding the case of reinfections, Dr Noor Hisham responded that there are a few cases of weak positives, and those are under observation. However, there have been no cases of strong positive reinfections thus far.

There are also enough ventilators, with over 900 devices available. However, with Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) which are consumables, Dr Noor Hisham shared that there is available stock for two weeks, while procurement is getting more.

On the topic of plasma treatment, a treatment where the plasma of those who have recovered (carrying Covid-19 antibodies) is injected into patients, which has seen some success, it remains an emergency measure, used with Level 5 patients.

At this point, Malaysia has succeeded in keeping the curve of infection below the curve predicted by JP Morgan’s forecast, which forecasted a peak of 6,300 patients on April 14. Dr Noor Hisham also defended targeted testing, noting that was the best use of limited resources.

“From our experience in the enhanced MCO regions, screening everyone gives us a detection rate of 0.5%,” he said, adding that targeted testing towards high risk clusters around patients under investigation has yielded better results. – April 13, 2020