The Malaysia Agro Exposition Park Serdang (MAEPS) will be converted into a temporary makeshift hospital as a precautionary measure to house Covid-19 patients should there be an increase in cases.
Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said this temporary hospital, which is being coordinated with the National Disaster Management Agency, would be ready by tomorrow evening.
The makeshift hospital would have 600 beds for Covid-19 patients who are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms.
“Hall A in MAEPS has the capacity to accommodate 400 beds, while Hall B could house 200 beds.
“Currently, there are sufficient number of beds in our existing hospitals. We expect a surge in cases by mid-April.
“Let us prepare for the worst and hope for the best. It’s better to over-prepared than under-prepared, so we will use this as a model for how to utilise an indoor stadium in case we need it.
“The reason is, now we are seeing 150 to 200 cases a day. But if the surge is 1,000 cases per day, then we need to look for beds,” said Dr Noor Hisham during his daily Covid-19 briefing in Putrajaya.
Pictures were circulated on social media yesterday of bed charts and medical personnel inside the MAEPS facility seemingly setting up the place for patients.
Some members of the public expressed concern that a huge surge in the number of Covid-19 patients was expected at the facilities.
Dr Noor Hisham, however, allayed those fears, stating that in the beginning, the Health Ministry had allocated 3,400 beds before adding more from its training and development centre to make it 5,292 just in case more cases came in.
The Health Ministry is working around the clock to bring down the number of Covid-19 cases, which are expected to surge next month.
Dr Noor Hisham cited a JP Morgan report that said there will be a spike in infections in April or May to 6,300 cases.
The Malaysian Institute of Economic Research’s (MIER) prediction is much higher at 8,900, he said.
“If we can bring the number down to below 5,000, then we can achieve our goal.
“We are working around the clock to deliver, and to bring down the number of cases. Perhaps, prove that these predictions are not right,” he said.
At the end of last week, Malaysia’s reported mortality rate was 0.77% versus the global average of 4.4% – lower than the 2% JP Morgan predicted.
According to MIER’s projection, April 12 will see the maximum number of cumulative cases at 8,957.
Dr Noor Hisham said the government is taking all the necessary steps to prepare for the surge and wants the disinfection process and detection of Covid-19 positive patients to be priorities.
“So far, everything we’ve done concerning cleaning and disinfecting has been carried out by all ministries, local states, municipal councils and DBKL. This process is ongoing.
“The second process that we need to do is acute case detection, which is to find, test and isolate those who have tested positive and put them into self-quarantine for 14 days and treat them.”