Negligent parents can be probed for children's possible Covid-19 exposure - Adham

 

There are now 82,341 cases of Covid-19 involving infants and children, and Health Minister Dr Adham Baba floated the idea of investigating negligent parents for possibly exposing their children to the disease.

Although there is no provision under the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act 1988 (Act 342) that allows for compounds to be imposed on parents who take children to crowded places, investigation papers can be opened.

Of the above number of infected children, Adham said, 19,851 cases involved children below four years old; 8,237 cases (five to six); 26,851 (seven to 12) and 27,402 (13 to 17), and they were Covid-19 patients in categories 1, 2 and 3.

“No one is in the ICU (intensive care unit),” he said in a joint press conference on the development of the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (NIP), with the coordinating minister Khairy Jamaluddin, today.

Expressing concern with the statistics, Adham urged parents or guardians to be more responsible in protecting children from being infected, such as by not taking their children to crowded places.

On the number of screening tests conducted for the period from May 23 to 29, he said that a total of 774,863 individuals nationwide underwent the test, with 53,419 individuals testing positive for Covid-19.

Following the sudden increase in new cases, Adham said that his ministry planned to expand screening testing using the Antigen Rapid Test Kit (RTK-Ag), with the assistance of the state governments.

“The Health Ministry (MOH) will increase screening tests for close contacts, especially in the Klang Valley, by creating sampling centres in the community,” he said.

To increase the detection of Covid-19 cases in the community, he said that his ministry would increase monitoring of all symptomatic cases receiving treatment at MOH health facilities, as well as those with a history of comorbid diseases regardless of age.

The current risk of death from Covid-19 is also at 45 patients out of 10,000 cases, which Adham expressed concern over.

- Bernama