New Covid-19 cases not due to non-compliance of conditional MCO: Ismail

The new Covid-19 cases discovered last week were not due to non-compliance by businesses of the standard operating procedures (SOPs) under the conditional movement control order (MCO).

On the contrary, Defence Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob (above) said the new infections were discovered as a result of employers complying with the SOP, pointing to the new cluster detected at a Setia Alam construction site as an example.

“The (cluster at the) construction site at Setia Alam was not because they did not comply with the SOP.

“Actually, they complied, they brought their workers to do the swab test and when they did, they realised there were positive cases (among the workers).

“(The infections) did not happen during work, but (it was discovered) because they went to get tested,” Ismail said during his daily press briefings on the Covid-19 situation today.

The Setia Alam construction site cluster was first reported on May 9 with 12 positive cases, all of whom are migrants.

Another cluster in a plant in Pedas, Negeri Sembilan was also not due to non-compliance of the SOP, Ismail stressed.

He said he was made to understand that it was a clerk who had gone into the building to collect their pay who had infected others in the plant.

“The infection came not from the plant, but it was brought in from the outside,” he explained.

This is similar to what had happened to medical personnel in hospitals who had been infected with Covid-19 in the past, he said.

Ismail said the medical personnel did not contract the virus from working with Covid-19 patients in the hospitals, but it was brought in from outside.

For example, a medical officer who had attended a wedding and got infected there, later brought the infection into the hospital where others were affected, he said.

Ismail also said they have since closed the construction site in Setia Alam and the plant in Pedas, as well as other sites where clusters have been discovered in the past week.

This includes another construction site in Ampang as well as a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur, he said.

“We will close based on the localities related to Covid-19 now. Last time, we might have closed the entire Setia Alam, but now we are closing the sites which are affected,” Ismail said. - Mkini