New testing uncovers more cases at Cyberjaya school, total 139

 

The number of Covid-19 cases in the cluster centred at the Sekolah Seri Puteri boarding school in Cyberjaya has grown to 139 today following a new round of testing.

This comprises a total of 114 students, 15 teachers, and 10 school support staff members.

“The positive cases will be referred to the Malaysia Agro Exposition Park Serdang Low-Risk Covid-19 Treatment and Quarantine Centre 2.0 (PKRC Maeps) while close contacts will be placed at government quarantine stations.

“All 139 Covid-19 positive cases are in stable condition and are in Category 1 or Category 2A,” said Selangor health director Dr Sha’ari Ngadiman.

According to the Health Ministry’s CovidNow website, 98.6 percent of the school’s student population and all its staff members including support staff have been fully vaccinated.

Sha’ari said the index case of this Persiaran Tasik cluster is a teacher who began experiencing symptoms on Nov 22 and was confirmed to have Covid-19 two days later.

Initial contact tracing identified another seven cases comprising six students and a teacher, and the Persiaran Tasik cluster was announced on Nov 29.

The Sepang District Health Office then tested 240 students on Dec 1 and identified 65 new cases.

Testing continued on another 523 people today comprising 432 students, 53 teachers, and 38 support staff members, which identified 65 new cases comprising 43 students, 13 teachers, and 9 staff members.

This brings the total up to 3pm today to 139 cases out of 946 people, corresponding to a positivity rate of 14.7 percent.

Last night, Education Minister Radzi Md Jidin’s communications team tweeted that this is the first time a boarding school has reported so many Covid-19 cases.

For context, education clusters are the second most numerous category of active clusters after workplace clusters. Out of 226 clusters that were active yesterday, 112 were workplace clusters and 53 were education clusters.

The largest active education cluster as of yesterday was the Jalan Bypass 2 cluster with 228 cases so far since the cluster was first identified on Nov 9.

The cluster involves an educational institution at Jalan Bypass in Segamat, Johor, and is the second time a Covid-19 cluster erupted there, according to data posted on the Health Ministry’s Github data repository.

In total, there are 775 active cases among the 53 education clusters. - Mkini