PETALING JAYA: More than 60% of long Covid patients referred to the rehabilitation centre in Hospital Sungai Buloh from November 2020 to September this year continued to have persistent symptoms, says Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

       Dr Noor Hisham said during the period, 2,712 long Covid patients were referred to the Covid-19 Rehabilitation Outpatient Specialised Services (Cross) at Hospital Sungai Buloh within four to 12 weeks after infection.

       Out of this, 984 cases or 36.3% recovered completely from symptoms experienced, 1,715 or 63.2% cases continued to have symptoms while 13, or 0.05%, ended in death.

       "However, checks on their medical records found that there were other comorbidities factors contributing to these deaths, such as cancer, kidney failure, heart attack, blood infection and lung infection.

       "Generally, most Covid-19 patients in Malaysia have the potential to make a full recovery, but there are a few patients facing complications known as long Covid.

       "Long Covid is when former Covid-19 patients still show signs and symptoms following recovery from infection," he said in a statement on Wednesday (Nov 10).

       Dr Noor Hisham said analysis on the same database found that a total of 2,324 patients had undergone evaluation after 12 weeks of post Covid-19 infection.

       "It was found that 97.5% of them were patients who experienced serious Covid-19 infections, whereby they were in Categories Four and Five," he said.

       Assessment after the 12th week on these 2,324 cases found that while 914 or 39.4% of cases recovered fully from symptoms, 1,410 or 60.6% continued to have symptoms, with most reported having more than one symptom.

       Five of the most commonly reported symptoms were fatigue (71.8%), difficulty breathing while carrying out an activity (61.9%), coughing (13.6%), pain (13.2%), and trouble sleeping soundly (11%), said Dr Noor Hisham.

       Analysis on patients after the 12th week of infection also found that while 61.1% did not experience loss of function, 25.6% experienced a negligible difficulty in functioning, 3.7% experienced a clear difficulty in functioning but did not require help from another person and 0.7% experienced a severe difficulty in functioning and needed help from others.

       "Without specific treatment, this condition will continue and a longer period is needed for patients to return to their complete function level.

       "Long Covid can also cause serious implications such as increase of morbidity, loss of ability, decrease of productivity and loss of income source," he said.

       Dr Noor Hisham called upon those experiencing long Covid to seek treatment at the nearest health facility for assessment.

       He said until Oct 30 this year, 5,193 patients underwent treatment and rehabilitation monitoring programmes to tackle long Covid, with this involving 31 public hospitals, four university hospitals and six private healthcare facilities.

       In the same statement, Dr Noor Hisham said that Malaysia recorded 6,243 new cases of Covid-19, bringing the cumulative number of cases since the pandemic began to 2,522,498.

       "Out of the 6,243 new cases, 106 or 1.7% are in Categories Three, Four and Five while 6,137 cases or 98.3% are in Categories One and Two," he said.

       There were also 5,068 recoveries, bringing the total number of recoveries to 2,430,122 or 96.34% of the total infections.

       Out of the 6,243 new cases, 24 were imported and the rest were local infections.

       As of Wednesday (Nov 10), there were also 543 cases in the Intensive Care Unit as well as 279 cases requiring ventilatory assistance, and seven new clusters.