Page 53 - COVID-19-Mortality-review-in-Malaysia-and-updates-on-clinical-management-of-COVID-19

Background

On the 20th March, during the National Crisis Preparedness and Response Centre
(CPRC) meeting which was chaired by our DG of Health, he had decided to form a

National COVID-19 Mortality Review Committee. As you know, the first COVID-19
death was reported on the 17th of March 2020. Subsequently, the decision to form a

committee was decided during the CPRC meeting.

On the 23rd March 2020, we had our first discussion with the chairman, Datuk Dr.

Christopher Lee. The objectives of the committee were to review the COVID-19
mortality cases, to look at the systemic issues and to identify the areas for
improvement in order to make recommendations based on the review, in the pursuit

of improving patient outcomes and to reduce morbidity & mortality among the
COVID-19 patients. From the 27th March until the 18th of June 2020, we had intensive
review of the cases. In total, we had 13 meetings. We were a bit aggressive during the

initial phase because the death kept on increasing during the initial phase of COVID-
19 pandemic. We had weekly meetings on every Tuesday and Friday. The first two

initial meetings were physical meetings and subsequently followed by
teleconferencing meetings.