M'sia to have over 1,400 ventilators on standby for Covid-19 patients

CORONAVIRUS | Malaysia is expecting to have in its possession over 1,400 ventilators on standby to treat Covid-19 patients.

Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said at present, public hospitals have a total of 219 ventilators and another 68 on loan from the private sector.

However, this has increased to 487 units after Beijing donated 200 ventilators to the Malaysian government.

He added that 956 more units are being procured, which will bring the total to 1,443 units.

"All in all, more ventilators are being procured and will be delivered to us within this week," he told a press conference in Putrajaya today.

The government had previously set a target of 800 ventilators.

Ventilators are crucial in ensuring that the Covid-19 mortality rate is kept low.

To date, Malaysia has recorded 2,908 cases with 2,218 still active cases and the rest have recovered.

Of the active cases, 66 Covid-19 patients are on ventilators.

The country is seeing consistent daily growth in cases but not at an exponential rate.

In countries with exponential cases, the healthcare system quickly becomes overwhelmed.

Some doctors have to choose who gets a ventilator and who doesn't while others have resorted to putting two patients on one ventilator.

Noor Hisham previously spoke about the importance of preventing an exponential spike in the number of cases so as to prevent such a situation.

"The worry is if there were a surge, then we have to choose which patient has the privilege (to use ventilators).

"We hope we won't come to that stage," he said on March 24.

Keep up with the latest information on the outbreak in the country with Malaysiakini's free Covid-19 tracker.

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