COVID-19: 66 arrive at monitoring centre for 14-day quarantine

by BERNAMA / pic by BERNAMA

A total of 66 individuals, comprising 46 Malaysian citizens and 20 of their non-citizen family members, who arrived from Wuhan, China this morning, are being housed at the monitoring centre at the Higher Education Leadership Academy (AKEPT) in Nilai for the 14-day quarantine period.

They are among Malaysians stranded in Wuhan, Hubei province, following the outbreak of COVID-19 since late December last year.

Also placed under the 14-day quarantine at the centre are 12 crew members, nine Malaysian government representatives and two officers from the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing.

The first two buses arrived at AKEPT at 9.50 am, while the other two arrived at 10.30 am, accompanied by police escort to the quarantine facility, located about 24 km from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA).

Earlier, all 89 people who boarded the AirAsia special flight arrived at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) from Wuhan Tianhe International Airport at 6.45 am and they were put through the decontamination process at the Air Disaster Unit (ADU) before being sent to AKEPT.

At AKEPT, four buses carrying the passengers, all wearing face masks, were seen heading to a building located at the back of the centre and upon arrival, all passengers were welcomed by health personnel and ushered to their respective accommodation.

Throughout the 14-day quarantine period, their contact will be limited to health personnel and no contact with outsiders will be allowed including family members.

Health screenings will be carried out twice daily to ensure they are completely healthy and allowed to return to their families upon the completion of the monitoring period.

The centre is strictly controlled by the security personnel and newsmen are only allowed to be within 450m of the facility’s main entrance.

This is the second humanitarian mission carried out by the Malaysian government in an effort to bring Malaysian citizens back from Wuhan after the first mission was successfully carried out on Feb 4.

To date, the cumulative number of COVID-19 positive cases in Malaysia has remained at 22 and 20 of them have fully recovered.