Health DG: Covid-19 patients must test negative twice before being discharged

PUTRAJAYA: Malaysian Covid-19 patients will only be allowed to leave hospitals after they are truly free of the virus.

Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said Malaysia’s way was different from how it was practised in other countries like the United Kingdom and Italy.

“If a patient still tests positive, then we need to make sure they remain in our hospitals.

“This is different from other countries like the UK and Italy. Over there, once Covid-19 positive patients are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms, they are advised to stay at home.

“Here in Malaysia, we make sure our patients are isolated in hospitals, so we can monitor them closely.

“Because of our close monitoring and our way of treatment, we can see that our outcomes are much better, ” he said at the ministry’s daily Covid-19 press conference here on Wednesday (April 15).

He was responding to a question on national athlete Jackie Wong, currently being treated at the Sibu Hospital after being admitted for Covid-19 on March 16.

However, in his reply, Dr Hisham did not refer to Wong in his answer, as it is the Health Ministry’s policy not to publicly identify Covid-19 patients.

Wong, who holds the national record in hammer throwing, could not be discharged from the hospital as his samples had yet to come back with consecutive negative results.

Covid-19 patients need to test negative twice in a row before they can be discharged from the hospital.