{"id":4064,"date":"2020-06-04T02:25:33","date_gmt":"2020-06-03T18:25:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/?p=4064"},"modified":"2020-06-04T07:29:45","modified_gmt":"2020-06-03T23:29:45","slug":"government-transition-does-not-affect-war-on-covid-1-dr-noor-hisham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/?p=4064","title":{"rendered":"Government transition does not affect war on COVID-1 &#8211; Dr Noor Hisham"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"col-sm-12 col-md-12 col-lg-12 mt-4 px-sm-0 px-md-5 px-lg-15 text-dark text-justify\">\n<p>KUALA LUMPUR, June 3 &#8211; A transition in government does\u00a0not disrupt the effort of the Ministry of Health (MOH) from continuing to combat the spread of COVID-19 cases in Malaysia, said Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Noor Hisham further said that after being appointed as the 8th Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin immediately\u00a0held\u00a0discussions with him to ensure that the transmission of COVID-19 in the country could be controlled and curbed at once.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe first day the Prime Minister called me and discussed two issues, namely, firstly\u00a0about Malaysians returning from abroad and secondly the\u00a0tabligh groups returning home and the\u00a0expected outbreaks\u00a0that would occur in all the states.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-sm-12 col-md-12 col-lg-12 mt-4 px-sm-0 px-md-5 px-lg-15 text-dark text-justify\">\n<p>\u201cAt that moment too, we were\u00a0trying to use our methods and engage with\u00a0other agencies. For example on March 10 we informed that if possible we should avoid Friday prayers because the tabligh groups\u00a0had returned to their villages. Subsequently,\u00a0Perlis had made the move\u00a0and on March 15 the government decided that no Friday prayers would be held for\u00a0two weeks, \u201dhe said.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Noor Hisham said this in a\u00a0live broadcast programme Temu Minda: \u2018Di Sebalik Tabir Kementerian Kesihatan Malaysia (KKM) Memerangi Wabak COVID-19\u2019 with Malaysian Communications and Multimedia (KKMM) Minister Datuk Saifuddin Abdullah.<\/p>\n<p>He also thanked the prime minister and related ministers for listening to the MOH&#8217;s recommendation to successfully convince\u00a0the government to take action that has never been done in history, namely,\u00a0declaring the Movement Control Order\u00a0(MCO) under the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act 1988 or Act 342.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-sm-12 col-md-12 col-lg-12 mt-4 px-sm-0 px-md-5 px-lg-15 text-dark text-justify\">\n<p>&#8220;Thanks to the trust given to civil servants..because when we have a strong argument, with the modeling and so on, the Prime Minister decided to implement the first MCO\u00a0on March 18, even though neighboring countries have not implemented it yet. And we were\u00a0the first to do so and we had acted quickly, &#8220;he said.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Noor Hisham believed\u00a0that the actions taken by the government including controlling the country&#8217;s borders have also succeeded in levelling the curve of\u00a0COVID-19 positive case in the country, defeating JP Morgan&#8217;s projection on the cumulative COVID-19 case in Malaysia.<\/p>\n<p>Responding to Saifuddin&#8217;s question about MOH employees dying of COVID-19, Dr Noor Hisham said the matter was a concern but explained that there were no death involving those working in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and wards to treat\u00a0COVID-19 until to date.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"col-sm-12 col-md-12 col-lg-12 mt-4 px-sm-0 px-md-5 px-lg-15 text-dark text-justify\">\n<p>\u201cSo we make sure that every MOH employee wears personal protective equipment (PPE) while on duty\u2026 the safest areas are those working in the ICU and ward.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is because we have also conducted studies on antibodies and so on. We have taken blood samples of the 486 MOH staff in ICU and wards and found no one was infected because they use infection controls, practice hygiene and make sure they use PPE and so on,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Noor Hisham said MOH\u00a0was still working hard to fight COVID-19 and kept abreast of the latest developments in the new virus.<\/p>\n<p>During the interview, Saifuddin expressed his gratitude to Dr Noor Hisham, whom he described as a &#8216;walking encyclopedia&#8217; working hard together with all the health and frontline force\u00a0in the fight against COVID-19.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; BERNAMA<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KUALA LUMPUR, June 3 &#8211; A transition in government does\u00a0not disrupt the effort of the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4065,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7574,15],"tags":[8002,7829,7374],"class_list":["post-4064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-covid19","category-politics","tag-dr-noor-hisham","tag-saifuddin-abdullah","tag-tan-sri-muhyiddin-yassin"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/saifuddin-noor-hisham.jpg",990,694,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/saifuddin-noor-hisham-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/saifuddin-noor-hisham-300x210.jpg",300,210,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/saifuddin-noor-hisham-768x538.jpg",640,448,true],"large":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/saifuddin-noor-hisham.jpg",640,449,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/saifuddin-noor-hisham.jpg",990,694,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/saifuddin-noor-hisham.jpg",990,694,false],"newsium-slider-full":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/saifuddin-noor-hisham.jpg",990,694,false],"newsium-featured":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/saifuddin-noor-hisham.jpg",990,694,false],"newsium-medium":["https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/saifuddin-noor-hisham.jpg",678,475,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Editor"]},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/?cat=7574\" rel=\"category\">COVID19<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/?cat=15\" rel=\"category\">Politics<\/a>","tag_info":"Politics","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4064"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4066,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4064\/revisions\/4066"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newmalaysiatimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}