Subang Jaya assemblyperson Michelle Ng has urged the government to clarify the conflicting information from the police and the MySejahtera app over purported Covid-19 cases in her constituency.
“I would like to ask the Malaysian government to give a clarification about the actual situation,” she said in a statement today.
She said Subang Jaya residents had received a notification through the MySejahtera app yesterday informing them that there were Covid-19 cases near the Empire Shopping Gallery, Subang Parade and Mydin USJ.
There had also been a viral message on social media urging people to avoid the three shopping centres due to the purported outbreak of Covid-19.
A Health Ministry official had yesterday clarified with reporters that the case in Subang Jaya was actually someone who was quarantined in a hotel in the area before the person was found to be positive for Covid-19.
“Imported case. Quarantined in a hotel around Subang Jaya. Don’t worry,” the official had said.
However, the police had later issued a denial, saying that the message is fake and untrue.
Ng said the Subang Parade management had also issued a statement, saying they had checked with the Health Ministry which confirmed that the information about Covid-19 cases in the area was false.
“As of this morning, the information that there are Covid-19 cases near Empire and Subang Parade no longer exists in the MySejahtera app,” she said.
Checks by Malaysiakini yesterday found that a search on “Empire Shopping Gallery” and “Subang Parade” - which are close to one another - returned the result: “There have been reports of Covid-19 case(s) within a 1km radius from your searched location in the last 14-28 days.”
A search on Mydin USJ yesterday also returned a similar statement, saying that Covid-19 had been detected in the vicinity within the past 14 days. The app does not state how many cases had been detected.
However, checks this morning found that there are no longer any reports of Covid-19 cases in the vicinity of Empire Shopping Gallery or Subang Parade, though the search on Mydin returned the same results as yesterday.
For the record, the MySejahtera app does not give the precise location of a Covid-19 case for medical privacy reasons.
Instead, it tells users whether cases of Covid-19 have been reported within one kilometre of a location the user has keyed in.
Ng said the government had appeared to be pushing for the MySejahtera app to become the main source of reference for the public on Covid-19 developments.
The government had mandated the app’s usage at all business premises as well as making it compulsory for the public to download the app to redeem the Penjana RM50 e-wallet voucher, she pointed out.
“With the efforts to position the MySejahtera app as the main source of reference in Malaysia, it is important to ensure that all information on the app is 100 percent accurate to avoid panic among the public,” Ng said in a statement today.
Malaysiakini has contacted the Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah to provide clarification on this matter and is awaiting his response. - Mkini
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