The new wave
finally strikes my homeland and northern part of the island since few days ago
Homeland had been
well controlled even though it had been noted with 2-3 daily figures of new
cases. The loosening of the control order had brought hope to economy recovery;
however it did not last long. Non compliance to the control order had
eventually fueled up the gas tank leading to a blast after the state election
in the Borneo. The blast’s shock wave had however expanded and over crumbled
the medical system. Daily ICU case raised and mortality had increased steadily
since 1+ months ago. I am not concerned about the daily cases but had been
tracing the ICU cases and ventilated cases rise during that period. These two
figures reflected the final burden of the medical care. The expo center neared
the agricultural university was transformed into a hospital for low risk group
with bed of 600 initially. Each bed had cubicle with cupboard, bed, table,
chair and a spacious personal space. Recent 2 weeks, it had been expanded into
10000 beds where it had been more crowded than a Bangla workers dorm…And even
with such facility, it was not enough, the ministry had planned to build more facility
and allowed low risk patient to be treated in their own HOME!!! The decision might lead to a further worsening of the condition as peoples have not and will not comply to the order....
Finally, the boleh
land had reached it breaking point. Darurat was announced and government had
the power to mobilize everything including private hospitals. Political
struggles was still going on despite of the Darurat. The DG was playing his
part well but without a full mandate and authority to run the situation all he
could do was plead everyone to stay home. The leaders of the country had been
breaching the SOP like don't know what; solid evidence? Look at the amount of
positive test result among the ministers; if they had complied to the order,
they would not get infected….if the head cannot be straight, don't hope the body to do so...
The northern part
is currently at the verge of outbreak after a nosocomial infection originated
from a resident physician treating a covid 19 patient.
The contact
tracing of such event had led to a massive screening event and currently it
had spread beyond the boundary of the relevant hospital. One of the patients was a husband
infected by his wife and he worked in a fast food joint at one of the airport express
station. The command center had extended it screening and isolated the in
patient service initially. Tension had built up as more and more positive cases were
noted and further closing down the service was done by stage. Some local authorities up north had ordered postponing of some events.
Since earlier this
month, the authority had demanded us to upgrade of screening. We were given a
quota to performed screen on patient with diagnosis of pneumonia. Few months
ago, we were encouraged to screen patient with severe acute respiratory illness
case and especially hinted us to screen those with diagnosis of pneumonia. We
had however known that it would be an index later on and started to refrain ourselves
from coding pneumonia in our diagnosis. Most of the hospital except one did
similarly except one. Their quota was 30 as they had coded pneumonia for 150+
cases for the last few months.
I had a referral case down south for pneumonia which favor pulmonary tuberculosis reactivation yesterday. I had decided to screen it as he will be staying in the negative pressure isolation room anyway. So after months of easiness, I had donned the PPE again…Smooth process and it was a good drill for me to revise the procedure.
I had called my dad on regular basis to check on them every few days. Life definitely is bored and the only things they could do is to walk along the jalan for exercise. Both of us shared the same feeling: accept the faith and coup with it....
