The Ministry of Health and Sports held its 31/2020 coordination meeting yesterday afternoon on prevention of COVID-19 with a wide range of measures and public participations.
Union Minister Dr Myint Htwe talked on responsibilities of people in coordination with health officials for preventing the disease without getting into a panic about it.
He also advised not to share or create fake news and rumours on social media, instead to get reliable information from official sources, including the Ministry of Health and Sports.
The WHO has confirmed over 100,000 cases of COVID-19 in the world on 7 March, and it also pushed for accelerating efforts on containment of the disease, identifying the patients, quarantine processes, readiness of health facilities and training courses for the health workers.
The MoHS has arranged for designated hospitals, while the possibility of virus spread has decreased due to a decline in the arrival of foreign visitors.
Myanmar will suspend inbound flights from the South Korea from 9 March to 24 April, and the MoHS has requested the relevant ministry to reduce or cancel three outbound flights to the East Asian nation as the average death rate in these cases has reached 3.4 per cent.
Elder people and patients with chronic diseases are most vulnerable to the mortality, and that awareness programmes are more important at the homes for the aged, youth camps and some training schools.
The Union Minister also pointed out the rapid spread of COVID-19 in the United States, the South Korea, Italy and Iran, and that Myanmar health workers are being alert to the disease in the round-the-clock surveillance in line with guidelines of the Clinical Management Committee and the Infection Prevention and Control Committee since the disease was first identified in China on 5 January.
He added the ministry adopted future plans and emergency response programmes through the public health, epidemiology, social, economic, travel and trade sectors not to waste the cost and time, while the natural history of disease is still unknown.
The MoHS officials are coordinating with the WHOs and global health organizations in monitoring the disease as it is a challenging issue for the healthcare sector of the country.
The meeting also discussed daily update situations and their reports, spread of the disease in foreign countries, public awareness programmes of the ministry, video conferencing of health officials on the disease in the respective areas, control measures among communities and accumulation of medicines to control the disease
MNA
(Translated by Aung Khin)
PHOTO: MNA
Ref; The Global New Light of Myanmar