By Karen Bong
KUCHING, June 2: Healthcare workers at the forefront of the race to contain the Covid-19 pandemic are seeing an increasingly difficult workload on a daily basis with long shift hours and urgent work to be carried out, all while coping with the heat stress wearing personal protective equipment (PPE).
As such, Covid-19 One Stop Centre (OSC) commander-in-chief Dr Cheong Yaw Liang emphasised that healthcare heroes and heroines definitely need a break to recharge, recover and restore from the day’s task.
“Otherwise, the prolonged non-stop working hours while donning the PPE and drenched in sweat can take a heavy toll on the workers as they will be exhausted, and may even have burnout and collapse.
“The healthcare frontliners needed to be given time and chance to rest and prepare themselves to continue the fight against Covid-19 which still has a long way to go,” he told DayakDaily when contacted today.
Hence, Dr Cheong pointed out that the cut off time at the Covid-19 OSC at MBKS Community Hall here is important to allow healthcare workers some time to rest.
Since the Covid-19 OSC was set up on May 3 to assist the government in Covid-19 efforts, the operation from Monday to Friday starts from 9am until 5pm, while Saturday and Sunday including public holidays starts from 9am to 12 noon.
“At 12 noon, we will stop the last vehicle on the queue and finish taking all swab tests.
“Those who did not make it in the queue can come back the next day,” he explained.
On a positive note, Dr Cheong said that they are currently working to increase the number of lanes for swab testings so as to speed up the process at the Covid-19 OSC which continues to see a large number of people as the pandemic situation in Kuching has yet to improve. — DayakDaily
