COVID-19 Positive Man Says MOH Wasn't Aware Of His Case Until After A Week Had Passed
The Ministry of Health only found out when they called to check on his brother.
By Sadho Ram — 24 Jan 2021, 03:57 PM — Updated almost 4 years ago
Over the week, a 28-year-old healthy man took to his Facebook page to share his cautionary tale after he tested positive for COVID-19
In his post on Friday, 22 January, Maverick Foong, the COVID-19 patient, shared that his test results came back positive on 12 January, three days after he started to have "a slight sore throat and fever".
Describing his positive result as "more deadly than I ever imagined", the 28-year-old said that his post isn't to scare anyone but to shed light on his experience with isolation, "the constant struggle to breathe and sleep at night without coughing my lungs out, the nauseousness, the body aches, and the feverishness".
"...not to mention the pain and guilt of bringing this virus back to my family," he wrote while stating that he as a "healthy young man" is "going to get through this no matter what".
"But there are so many people in my life and in the world [who] could possibly not get through this due to their age [or] a compromised immune system and this is why I am writing this post," he added.
Foong, who lives with his parents and a younger brother, said that he asked them to go for swab tests to determine if they were infected too
Following the initial test, his brother's results came back positive on 14 January.
His parents took another test on 21 January, following which his father tested positive but his mother's results once again came back negative. Both of them had been showing symptoms.
According to Foong, on the night of 14 January, his coughing got worse with him having chest pain and not being able to breathe properly.
"Called 999 for an ambulance, waited for them for three hours and they told me they couldn't make it due to high traffic," he said, adding that he felt helpless at the situation.
However, there was no word from the Ministry of Health (MOH)
The 28-year-old said that since the day he tested positive, he had no heard back from MOH.
By 15 January, he had lost his appetite completely and his cough had gotten worse. He had also started to feel nausea and was having diarrhoea. But had still not heard from MOH, "not even a call or text."
It was the same next day on 16 January when he was feeling very nauseated and bloated.
According to Foong, the cycle would continue for another three days with him experiencing a varying degree of symptoms such as sore throat, fever, vomiting, diarrhoea, fatigue, and body aches.
However, he would still not have heard anything from MOH so far, he said.
Finally, MOH called on 20 January. However, the call was not for him.
It was for his younger brother, Foong wrote on his Facebook post that has gone viral.
According to his post, MOH was not even aware of Foong being a COVID-19 patient.
By then, over a week had passed after Foong's COVID-19 test results had come back positive.
"They asked us to meet up at Dewan MPSJ SS15 on 26 January and there will be a doctor there to check on our condition," he wrote, adding that his cough is now "starting to improve but just a tiny bit".
