Petaling Jaya,
Selangor,
Malaysia
Interview - SafelyHQ User in Malaysia:
This is a first hand account of the coronavirus situation in Malaysia. The user discusses a colleague's mother being infected, tested, and treatment as well as the situation in the country.
User:
All right. I'm located in Petaling Jaya city in Selangor in Malaysia.
Safelyhq:
Okay, thanks. And what's the scenario in, in your case, how has coronavirus impacted, or what's the experience that you've had?
User:
Initially I thought it wasn't that bad because there were the only like 20 cases, so I thought with 20 cases, you actually just heal up then, it explode to about 50 or a hundred cases. And one of those cases actually affected a colleague's mother in my workplace. And so, we were all given the directive to self-quarantine immediately while the office was getting sanitized. The effect it has had, is a little bit surreal to know that it's coming very close, in terms of actually effecting one of the colleagues. But thankfully he has been tested negative so far so that's a good thing. So just after that, just last night or something, our prime minister declared a movement restriction order in that nonessentials services will be closed and things like it. So things are getting serious and we just had two deaths in the country. Two people have been killed by the virus. And that's a pretty profound and the statistics are climbing for us, like almost 700 people are affected by the virus. I do not know what is the full impact of the restriction order. How will it be enforced, whether there'll be any enforcement of the restrictive order. Some private premises have already started closing. There are closure notices everywhere and things like that. We see councils and staff that are issuing notices of which places they're closing, which places they're checking. Even my friend has a small restaurant and he's saying that it's only open for take away. So, it remains to be seen how these will really affect me and the community and things like that.
Safelyhq:
Do you know how testing worked for your colleague's mother, if she was able to get successfully tested and how that worked?
User:
I do have an account of the experience, she checked into the hospital with some fever and they did an initial test on her. The test that she took, it takes two days to have results. So after two days, they knew that was positive and by that time it was like Tuesday or something like that, Tuesday or Wednesday. And then we got the news then I was immediately told to evacuate the office because he was in office on Monday for a few hours so they might be some contamination and things like that. So on the colleague's mother, after the test was done she was warded into the hospital, special ward and was taken care of. And so far only experiencing mild fever and things like that. And after that she was tested a second time and it was still positive. The son is negative, and so far well she still has the virus inside her. Yeah, it's already been two weeks and not this week. So, we are not sure what is going to happen.
Safelyhq:
Now that you're impacted by coronavirus, do you have any message to people, now that it's something you've experienced personally or any recommendations?
User:
Okay. basically just stay away from large crowds. Stay within your own home if possible as much as possible. Only go out if you absolutely need to like get groceries done or get food or things like that, which is basically the aim of this movement control that we are having now. Basically that for individuals, do not travel, interstate or do not travel long distances back to your hometowns or homelands because that might cause the infection amongst other people who are older or elder, it's mostly the elderly people who get affected the most with the underlying conditions. However, one of the deaths in our country, is from a 34 year old men. Who didn't have any preexisting conditions. So that's actually quite scary. For this, I think the advice of staying away from people, and keeping checks on your health and practicing all the hygiene things, washing your hands for 20 seconds, wash up your hands and hand sanitizers and things like that
