YANGON, Sept. 26 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi has urged people not to follow home remedies, but to go to the hospital for more effective treatment of COVID-19.

"What we have seen is that some people try to use household remedies when they think that they have been infected and treat themselves at home. They go to the hospital only when their home remedies fail," the state counsellor said in her televised message to the public late Friday.

Suu Kyi encouraged people to go to the hospital at early stages and said that it would be difficult to contain the disease and provide treatment if the patient is sent to the hospital only at later stages of infection.

"This matter of people trying to cure themselves using household remedies is related to the spread of news online. It will be wrong to follow such treatments because no one has a definite method to prevent COVID-19," she said.

She said that the government has been arranging to make district and township hospitals available for COVID-19 tests and called for assistance from healthcare workers and doctors from the private sector to fill the need of human resources at the hospitals.

Test kits will be distributed to district and township hospitals to be able to provide proper tests for COVID-19 soon, she said.

The state counsellor also advised people not to have too much worries about the current situation, but to have a certain extent of worry which is required for having awareness.

"Too much anxiety could reduce the immune system of the body. Too much stress caused by worries could lose immunity to the disease. We don't want people to have worries unnecessarily," she said.

According to the latest figures released by the Health and Sports Ministry, 9,112 people have been tested positive for COVID-19 and the death toll has reached 174 as of late Friday in Myanmar.