Living with Covid-19: Health Ministry to release new SOP

NILAI: The Health Ministry will soon release details of revised standard operating procedures (SOPs) related to COVID-19 as the country transitions to living with the pandemic.

Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad said the revised SOPs would cover the home surveillance order (HSO), the use of face masks, and the declaration of local areas of infection.

“As soon as we have the implementation date, the Director General of Health will release the details to the public.

“The details are technical. For example, the HSO was previously for five days and required updating symptoms in MySejahtera. With the review, it may change.

“We are now in an era where we start treating Covid-19 like other viruses such as influenza. We have moved from a pandemic to an endemic, and now we want to transition out of the endemic phase to living with the virus,” he said on Thursday (June 27).

He told reporters this after opening the ministry’s Nutrition Month Malaysia (NMM) 2024 with the theme “Change Mindset to Prevent Diet-Related Diseases” here.

Regarding the programme, he said it aimed to highlight the importance of a broad-based approach in encouraging the public to change their mindset towards preventing diet-related nutritional disorders and provide guidance for adopting healthy eating and active living practices.

He said the current prevalence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in the country was very worrying, with the National Health and Morbidity Survey (NHMS) 2023 showing an increase in the prevalence of obesity and overweight to 54.5% last year from 50.1% in 2019.

“Consistently for the last decade, one in two Malaysian adults has been overweight, while one in six adults has diabetes. This shows that more than half of adults are exposed to the risk of getting NCDs due to uncontrolled obesity,” he said.

Dr Dzulkefly said the Health Ministry has also drafted a Strategic Plan for Reducing Sugar Among Malaysians (2024-2030) to ensure more aggressive and targeted activities can be implemented in an integrated manner at various levels.

“It is to deal with excessive sugar intake through the War on Sugar initiative that will be launched soon,” he said. — BK