Health DG says 13 new clusters have been identified, while 62 clusters reported an increase in cases yesterday

by NUR HAZIQAH A MALEK / pic by RAZAK GHAZALI

MALAYSIA records another daily high in the Covid-19 cases 2,593 yesterday, with four imported, bringing the current active positive cases to 24,347.

To date, the nation’s cumulative number of positive Covid-19 cases is 125,438.

Prior to this, the country’s highest-ever daily cases recorded were 2,525 on Dec 31 last year.

Thirteen new clusters have been identified as of yesterday, while three expired — making the total number of active clusters that are being monitored up to 252 clusters.

Health DG Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah yesterday said 62 clusters have reported an increase in cases and three with the highest count, namely Seri Lanang with 504 cases, Bukit Pasir (283) and Teratai (85).

“The newly identified clusters are identified as Dataran Utas, Casa Permai, Medan Jasa, Tasik Utama, Firma, Persiaran Teknologi, Bersepadu, Jalan Padu, Kampung Pitas, Ikan Emas, Kayuh, Jalan Seputeh and Anak Air,” he said.

The state with the highest count of new Covid-19 cases was Selangor with a total of 965 cases. Out of the total, 894 came from the currently active clusters and close contact tracing; followed by Johor with 571 cases and Sabah (405). Out of the total, 81 cases were from lockup, prison, immigration detainment depot clusters, namely Jalan Harapan, Pagar Siput, Tembok Gajah and Matambai clusters. Currently, 141 cases are undergoing treatment in the intensive care units, where 67 of them require ventilators.

Five hundred and thirteen deaths from the virus have been reported, with four new deaths announced yesterday, two from Sabah, one each from Selangor and Kuala Lumpur.

Meanwhile, 1,129 patients have recovered from Covid-19, adding to the cumulative total of recovered cases to 100,578.

Senior Minister (Security Cluster) Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob said the Ministry of Health (MoH) has performed 1,303 screening tests on the population, and 555 were confirmed positive for Covid-19.

“MoH has also confirmed that the rate of transmission within the community of the dormitories is still pretty high,” he said in the daily Recovery Movement Control Order (RMCO) update yesterday.

In addition, the MoH has also confirmed an increase in positive cases within the city of Ipoh, Perak.

“MoH has confirmed 106 positive cases that are scattered across the city, and out of the total, 89 cases were from local transmissions reported within the period of 14 days,” he said.

The MoH also confirmed that there is an active cluster involving a factory area focused in a few of the industrial areas within the city.

“The government has agreed to implement a Conditional MCO (CMCO) for Ipoh, starting Jan 7 until Jan 20,” he said.

The CMCO would also allow for targeted screening and reduce movement within the population of the community.

Meanwhile, Ismail Sabri said the Security Cluster’s compliance task force has detained 194 individuals on Tuesday for breaching the standard operating procedures (SOPs), and all of them were compounded.

“Among their offences included not wearing face masks (84), failure to ready an equipment to record customer details (74), failure to comply with physical distancing (25) and others (11),” he said.

This is following the task force’s inspections on 3,388 supermarkets, 4,227 restaurants, 1,580 hawkers, 1,313 factories, 3,133 banks and 559 government offices.

Also inspected were transportation terminals, 900 land terminals, 233 water terminals and 66 air travel terminals.

For the border enforcement, the relevant authorities have detained 49 foreigners travelling without legal documents, two smugglers and seven vehicles were confiscated following the mounting of 111 roadblocks.

For the sanitation operations, 42 operations were performed in 21 red zones, two orange zones, two yellow zones and three green zones, spanning 11 states and three federal territories.

Mandatory quarantine has seen over 7,996 currently undergoing isolation while 540 individuals were sent to the hospital for treatment and to date, 90,744 individuals were allowed to return home.

As of yesterday, 27 construction site inspections were performed and found that all of them comply with the SOPs that are in force.

To date, around 14,172 inspections were performed on construction sites by the Construction Industry Development Board, involving 8,046 construction sites.