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PETALING JAYA: Former Prime Minister Najib Razak has spoken out against the idea of allowing low-risk Covid-19 patients to self-quarantine and receive treatment at home.
He was responding to the chief health officer, Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah, who yesterday said the ministry was considering this as an option, if its low-risk treatment and quarantine centers are filled.
In a Facebook post, Najib said that while Western countries allowed asymptomatic Covid-19 patients to undergo treatment at home, these countries have recorded hundreds of thousands or millions of Covid-19 cases.
“There is no guarantee that Covid-19 patients who are quarantined at home will not infect their family members who then have the potential to transmit Covid-19 to the community.
“We have a lot of hotels and convention centers that don’t have much business, it’s better if the government uses these places to quarantine Covid-19 patients. Make sure they are controlled. “
Najib said that those who can pay their own quarantine costs should do so, while the government could pay for the B40. Alternatively, Najib said, this could be funded by the MySalam scheme.
He said the government shouldn’t risk further spreading of the virus just to save a little money.
“Allowing home quarantine for those returning from abroad in July led to Sivagangga’s group in Kedah, which required a lot of resources and took months to contain.
“Even though the government corrected their mistake after I asked them several times, including in Parliament, to order them (the returning Malaysians) to be quarantined in the government quarantine centers, it was too late. Hopefully the government does not repeat its mistake ”.
At a press conference yesterday, Noor Hisham said that if implemented, the measure would only apply to those who are asymptomatic, adding that other countries have taken this route.
“Previously, we admitted them to the hospital. It was not to treat them but to isolate them so they would not infect others.
“At this time, however, there is sufficient capacity to treat these patients in makeshift hospitals for low-risk cases,” he said.
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