Health authorities hope special needs patients can be cared by family

Local health authorities hope that family members of patients with reduced mobility or that need special care can be on the frontline as their caretakers in case these are confirmed to be infected with Covid-19 or need to undergo medical observation due to being a close contact.

Such idea was aired by Dr. Leong Iek Hou, coordinator at the local Center for Disease Control and Prevention, while presenting the new protocols established by the Novel Coronavirus Response and Coordination Center for these cases.

For Leong, family members are the most suitable caretakers and should volunteer to help providing care to these patients in case of need as “these patients need to be in contact with someone they know and that can help to fulfill better their needs.”

For such a reason, authorities are recommending that in case people with disabilities, elderlies, children, and others with special needs need to undergo quarantine or isolation procedures, they should be companied by a family member they can trust.

Explaining the new protocols, Leong explained that family members can and should solicit to be these people’s caretakers and join them during treatment or medical observation periods even if they are not listed as close contacts.

She also said that authorities hope that families that have members in such conditions should have three doses of the vaccine done to reduce the risks coming from the potential need to have close contact via caretaking of an infected person.

Leong also said that the health bureau will provide training to family members willing to help in such situations.

Questioned if children could be separated from their parents in situations of quarantine, Leong said that usually, such case does not happen due to the fact that normaly families live together and share the same spaces.

Nonetheless, in a situation in which the parents are the ones in need to undergo medical observation or treatment and the children are not listed as close contacts they cannot request to company the parents as the “risk is too high” and they “cannot make such decision,” she said. In case something of that kind happens, Leong said that authoritoes hope that other family members or friends can step forward to help to take care of the children while the parents are not able to do so.