PUTRAJAYA: The Health Ministry is in the process of drafting a new set of guidelines for its specialists and doctors involved in the Covid-19 fight.
Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the guidelines were expected to be announced soon.
This comes as the ministry was making changes to some of its protocols on handling Covid-19 treatment, such as the requirement for only one instead of two negative test results before a patient is allowed to be discharged.
"The guidelines are meant for our specialists and doctors on ways for us to treat and manage the patients for 14-days.
"We can even discharge a patient after 14 days even if he or she is tested positive, but only due to residual effects. The virus cannot infect others in this state.
"This is because based on the information conveyed to us by the World Health Organisation (WHO) after 14-days, the chance of infectivity of the virus has reduced.
"We are also maintaining our stance of the 14-day treatment period instead of following the WHO's recommendation of 10-days," said Dr Noor Hisham during a daily press briefing at the ministry today.
Dr Noor Hisham said, however, if a patient continues to display symptoms after 14-days, he or she would be subjected to further treatment and monitored until they were confirmed to be virus-free.
He also said there would be an additional five laboratories in the next few weeks to boost the testing capacity of Covid-19 to 30,000 tests daily.
"Our testing capacity started with only 7,000 tests per day and now it has increased to 25,000 daily.
"Perhaps in the next week or so, with five labs coming up, we can increase to 30,000 cases per day.
"We have 120 hospitals ready for health screenings, 40 hospitals identified for health facilities and seven hospitals for Covid-19 patients only where occupancy is less than 15 per cent," he said.
He also said the ministry has more than 1,000 ventilators.
In the event of a surge in cases, Dr Noor Hisham said 80 per cent of Covid-19 cases are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms whereby patients do not need to be hospitalised.
He added that the ministry had identified several places that can operate within 24 hours in case of a surge following the Hari Raya celebrations and WHO's warning over the potential second wave of Covid-19 infection for countries with declining cases.
"Our ICU (intensive care unit) expertise is getting better and we are continuing to improve. We have seen good management teams in hospitals.
"Those with mild symptoms need not be hospitalised. Wards and ICU are for those in stage three, four or five.
"However, we have gained a lot of experience in the last few months, which we can use to teach young doctors, making our preparedness much better than before." he said.