Bringing God's Love To The Poor & Needy In Crisis
CREST PKRCS TRAVELODGE City Center
By Rev Dr Ng Swee Ming
Towards the end of May 2021, with the escalating Covid19 Pandemic, a few Church Leaders met to discuss what more the Malaysian Church can and should do. The possibility of using Churches as Covid Vaccine centres were discussed. Covid Quarantine centres were needed primarily for the B40 and migrant community who generally live in crowded quarters with shared cooking and bathing facilities. It is near impossible to do proper Covid quarantine under such circumstances.
The first formal meeting was on Sat 5th June 2021 via zoom, where Pastoral leaders from different networks in the Klang Valley met to deliberate this matter. CREST – Crisis Relief Services and Training was also invited to this meeting given our experience handling disasters and what we have been doing since the beginning of this pandemic – Food4Hope, Oximeters, Oxygen Concentrators, N95 Masks, PPEs and Sanitisers distribution.
It was decided then that CREST, as a Christian NGO, spearhead this project, and the Churches will support in terms of Volunteers and Finances. CREST started earnestly to explore a suitable venue for a Low-Risk Covid Quarantine Centre catering to the B40s / Migrant communities and their families. In official tandem, an application was submitted to the relevant government departments for their input and approval.
It took about 6 to 7 weeks of trying to find a suitable venue that would satisfy the stringent standards and requirements of the relevant authorities. It did not help that we were the first to try to set up a Low-Risk Covid Quarantine Centre, which will be free because of the nature of our particular target group.
We finally settled on Travelodge City Centre, a 198 room fully furnished hotel right in the centre of KL, across the road from Central Market, as our venue. It was not ideal, and some quick renovations had to be done, but we persevered and finally managed to get provisional approval from the authorities to start.
We started on Saturday 7th August 2021 as a Low-Risk Covid Quarantine Centre catering to a very select population who were Covid19 Positive but only at Stage 1 and 2 with no Co-morbidities or risk factors. 1st floor is to be used only by the Volunteers since we are all on 24 hours shift duties. We can cater to a maximum number of about 250 patients at any one time.
The patients are then checked by the Medical Doctors to see that they are only Stage 1 or 2 Covid cases with no significant co-mobidities or risk factors.
As part of the check up a lung ultrasound is done for every patient to make sure that their lungs are not involved. If lung involvement is seen then they are at least Stage 3 and not suitable for our Low Risk Center. We are fairly well equipped with not only ultrasound but also an ECG machine.
All patients have their belongings checked on arrival like cigarettes, sharp objects and cooking utensils as no cooking is allowed in the room.
Their belongings are tagged and returned to them on discharge or transfer out.
Patients are referred from the different Covid Assessment Center(CAC) & KlinikKesihatan (KK) in the KlangValley.
Only Covid19 Positive patients who are at Stage 1 or Stage 2 are referred to us.Our nurses and Doctors will reassess the patients to nakesure that they are Low Risk Covid cases.Any progression to Stage 3 or above will be referred to Government centersbetter equipped to manage them.
Sanitation is also a very important aspect of the whole project.
- Rooms must be sanitised after the patient checks out
- Cars and Vans need to be sanitised after fetching patients or sending patients to Government
- Meals boxes and other rubbish need to be collected from the patients rooms daily and disposed off
- All PPEs, Masks, Face-shields need to be properly collected and
Providing three meals a day for all the patients and volunteers is a never-ending task. Food needs to be distributed correctly according to the room occupancy numbers and occasionally special meals, e.g. vegetarian diet. All this need to be attended to. Meals are all prepared off-site and delivered in meal boxes ready to be distributed. Food distributors need to be in full PPE, placing the meals on the chairs in front of each room for the patients themselves to collect.
Lastly, a WORD OF THANKS and GRATITUDE for all those who have volunteered to help at the Centre, contributed financially to make this whole project possible and those who have birth and sustained this entire undertaking by their fervent consistent prayer support. God alone knows who you are.
Day 24 in our 90 Days (3 months) commitment to run this Covid Quarantine Centre. Volunteers are still needed, and we have yet to achieve our budgeted target amount of about RM2.7 million.
On behalf of CREST and all the patients –past, present and future, I want to say a BIG THANK YOU to everyone who made this project possible.
