Malaysia to discharge Covid-19 patients after 2 weeks even if they still test positive

Petaling Jaya

MALAYSIA'S Health Ministry will be discharging Covid-19 patients even if they test positive at the end of their two-week hospital treatment because they would not be able to infect others, said Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

The Health director-general said the previous protocol - in which they would continue to keep patients in the hospital as long as they test positive on the 13th day - would be changed, the Star online newspaper reported.

"According to a (recent) World Health Organization (WHO) report, if they have passed the 14 days (of treatment), the chances of them infecting others are zero.

"With the new information that we have obtained, if after 14 days, even though the PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test is positive, we can discharge them," he said at his daily press briefing on May 26.

"Last time, before we discharged a patient, on the 13th day we would collect a sample from the patient. One negative was not enough, we would collect two samples in a period of more than 24 hours.

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"When we had two negatives in a period of more than 24 hours, only then we would discharge the patient.

"Later, we changed (the protocol), with one negative being enough for us to discharge the patient.

"However, we have received info from WHO and research from other countries that the infectivity declines after 14 days.

"Even if the PCR test detects the virus, it would be because of virus shedding or the fragment of a dead virus, so when it is detected by the PCR test, it is a weak positive. So the infectivity is almost zero," he said.

Malaysia reported 15 more Covid-19 cases and zero deaths on Wednesday, the lowest daily figure since the movement control order (MCO) was enforced on March 18.

This takes the total number of infections in the country to 7,619 cases.

Out of the 15 cases, six are imported while nine are local transmissions. Of the nine, four were non-Malaysians, said Dr Noor Hisham.

He also said 42 more patients had been discharged, which means 6,083 patients have recovered from Covid-19 in Malaysia since the outbreak began.

Malaysia's Covid-19 recovery rate is now at 79.8 per cent out of the total number of positive cases.

There are now 1,421 active cases being treated at the country's health facilities at present.

At present, there are six patients treated at intensive care units with four of them on ventilator support.

The country's death toll remained unchanged at 115 since May 22.