Volunteers check the QR code of Covid-19 vaccine recipients at the OKU Sentral drive-through vaccination centre in Johor Baru, August 25, 2021. – Bernama pic
JOHOR BARU, Oct 7 — The rate of occupancy for government hospital beds in the intensive care unit (ICU) for critical Covid-19 cases in Johor has shown a marked improvement in the past two weeks, with a decreasing trend of up to 31 per cent, said State Health and Environment Committee chairman R. Vidyananthan.
He said this puts the current ICU bed occupancy rate at 66 per cent compared to the previous high of 97 per cent due to a decrease in Covid-19 patient admissions to government hospitals throughout Johor.
Based on the current statistics, Vidyananthan said daily Covid-19 admissions to government hospitals had also decreased by 43 per cent from 223 to 127 patients.
“Therefore, ICU beds for Covid-19 patients in Johor hospitals currently have a usage rate of only 41 per cent or 994 out of 2,414 of the total capacity of non-ICU beds.
“As of Tuesday, the usage of Covid-19 ICU beds also showed that as much as 51 per cent or 66 out of 130 beds were occupied throughout Johor,” he said in the state Covid-19 update issued here today.
Vidyananthan, who is also the Kahang assemblyman, said that as the country was moving towards the endemic phase, there was a need to decentralise managing Covid-19 patients, including the Covid-19 Assessment Centre (CAC).
“In this regard, there is a change in the location of CAC operations in Johor Baru where two existing CACs, namely the Bukit Indah CAC and the Pasir Gudang CAC, will cease operations from this Saturday.
“However, the CAC service will continue to operate at the other 13 government health clinics within the Johor Baru district,” he said.
On a related issue, Vidyananthan advised all Covid-19 positive patients to obtain their health assessment status notification by visiting https: tinyurl.com/vcacjohor where a health officer will contact the patient within 48 hours with the clinic appointment date to be given.
However, he stressed that walk-in appointments for these Covid-19 positive patients to the clinics are not allowed.
“For the other districts in Johor, there will be no change in their respective CAC locations for the time being,” he said, adding that any changes would be notified periodically.
On the Covid-19 National Immunisation Programme (PICK) for youth between the ages of 12 and 17, which started in Johor on September 20, Vidyananthan said there was an estimated 359,900 youth in the state where 358,437 of them have registered through the MySejahtera app.
He said as of yesterday, a total of 254,625 or 70 per cent of the state’s youth aged below 18 years have already received their first dose, while 7,225 have completed their second dose.
“For the adult population, which is those aged above 18 years, 2.79 million individuals or 93.8 per cent have received their first dose while 2.31 million of them have completed their second dose,” said Vidyananthan.