KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 3 — The Health Ministry will send additional medical personnel to Sabah and other states fighting the Covid-19 virus on a needs basis, Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said today.

The Health director-general said staff has been deployed to the north Borneo state in the past two weeks, adding that the ministry is now fine tuning the kind of support needed.

"We’ve been sending extra support to Sabah for two weeks. Now we’re looking to specific needs like, for example, a hospital needs extra hands, then we will send them the help they need.

"These health and medical experts will handle close contact tracing, look after the quarantine centres, hospital and medical clinics,” Dr Noor Hisham said during his daily Covid-19 briefing in Putrajaya.

He said the ministry may also rope in the armed forces to help with logistics.

"MOH may not have the means, so we discussed using the air force to fly in our equipment and medicines,” Dr Noor Hisham said.

He said this issue was raised in today’s special Covid-19 meeting with the National Security Council chaired by Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.

He added that the MOH is also concerned at the fast spread of the virus in Kedah, where infections have also been in the three figures.

"The Tembok cluster is among the things we spoke about and we hope we can control this cluster as it is in the prison,” said Dr Noor Hisham.