Wish to escape Klang Valley’s CMCO? Dr Noor Hisham warns against spreading Covid-19 to hometowns, family

 

Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the risk of those leaving Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya being unknown carriers of Covid-19 and then infecting their family members, most of which are presumably among the high-risk groups. — Picture by Shafwan Zaidon

KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 13 — Malaysians planning to escape the conditional movement control order (CMCO) in Klang Valley should also remain at home wherever they are if there is no reason to leave the house, said Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah today.

The Health Ministry’s director-general pointed out the risk of those leaving Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya being unknown carriers of Covid-19 and then infecting their family members, most of which are presumably among the high-risk groups.

“To those who want to go back to their hometowns, make sure they stay at home.

“But, the dangers of going back to our hometowns is we are not sure if we are carriers of the virus when we should actually be protecting our older family members in our hometowns,” said Dr Noor Hisham.

He reiterated how the elderly would be more susceptible to contracting the disease, and how it remains everyone’s responsibility to keep the virus away from our hometowns and loved ones.

“What we want is to urge Malaysians to stay at home if they have no matters to deal with outside, and if they do need to leave their homes, maintain strictly to the set SOPs,” he said.

When asked on the ministry’s projection of cases and the Covid-19 infection rate in Klang Valley about to enter CMCO, Dr Noor Hisham said it is still too soon to make a detailed forecast.

“For any public health intervention (method), we need some time to observe developments, maybe for a week, before we can see the latest data to make a projection,” he said.

Dr Noor Hisham also clarified that the ministry will stick to its targeted approach of contact tracing and acute case detection to test those potentially infected, as opposed to mass testing in the three states.

“We will identify a locality that is seeing an increase in case numbers and we will use our method of a targeted approach to handle the locality.

“Even though the state is under CMCO, we can still enforce a targeted enhanced MCO (TEMCO) within the locality if the to control the area and screen all those within the affected area,” he said.

“For now we will use our methods of contact tracing and acute case tracing and detection to identity positive cases,” he added.

Malaysia today recorded a total of 660 new cases, bringing the cumulative number of cases to 16,880, with 5,345 active cases.

A total of 11,372 of those cases have recovered and were discharged, with 163 deaths to date which includes the four fatalities reported today. - malaymail