By Khairul Azran Hussin
SHAH ALAM, Jan 30 — The Federal government must speed up and raise the number of healthcare personnel to increase the effectiveness of the fight against Covid-19 pandemic.
Selangor Task Force for Covid-19 (STFC) chairman Datuk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad said the sufficiency of frontliners would speed up the testing, contact-tracing, isolation, quarantine, treatment and patient surveillance processes.
“Selangor is the state with the most dense population, so industrial activity, business and construction sites would surely bear the biggest brunt.
“Should all these procedures be delayed or suspended, it means we will fail to break the chain of infection and this will continue to drive cases up,” Dr Dzulkefly said in a statement today.
The former Health Minister also urged the government to fully make use of the latest technology to trace close contact of positive cases.
“We are currently experiencing a delay in contact-tracing because we are basically using human resources and not digital application,” he added.
On January 18, the Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin announced that an additional 3,500 frontliners will be hired with an allocation of RM150 million.
Muhyiddin said the addition of healthcare personnel would include assistant medical officers, paramedics, laboratory technicians and nurses.
