By Karen Bong
KUCHING, Dec 28: All eight individuals who had close contact to the Omicron-positive Bintulu student, who was released from a quarantine centre before his swab test result was made known and met up with his friends to play basketball, have tested negative for Covid-19.
Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said that the student who returned from the United Kingdom had breached his quarantine by going out on Dec 17 to the Covid-19 Assessment Centre (CAC), two days before his home surveillance order (HSO) was due to end on Dec 19.
“I will continue to ask the Bintulu District Health Office to continue to investigate and trace any other individual who may have come into contact with the student and also to make sure they take their tests.
“We will investigate to see what happened there (the Bintulu student case),” he said at a press conference in Putrajaya which was broadcast on Ministry of Health (MOH) social media channels today.
Khairy pointed out that the MOH is also considering taking further action against individuals who flout their quarantine orders, especially repeat offenders.
From Dec 1 until 28, MySejahtera data showed that as many as 1.4 per cent of Covid-19 positive cases have breached their quarantine at home orders.
“Omicron is here and what we want to do is to slow the spread,” he said, noting the increasing number of Omicron cases among pilgrimage or “umrah” returnees with 30 of 49 cases detected in Malaysia so far.
Moreover, he added that many of them did not comply with the standard operating procedures (SOPs) while undergoing home quarantine.
“That’s why I appeal to all returnees from overseas, especially returning from umrah to comply with HSO and home quarantine, not only to stay at home but to isolate themselves from their family members. Food can be sent up to the rooms, and take turns to use the bathrooms,” he advised.
On whether Omicron has spread widely in the community in the past two weeks, Khairy said the federal government is monitoring the situation closely to see the extent or knock-on effect from imported Omicron cases especially from umrah in the next two weeks.
“We are increasing the genomic surveillance capacity and we will focus on contacts (tracing) as well as outsource sequencing work to private labs (are) in the works,” he said.
On a question if Malaysia would follow Singapore’s direction or Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations in shortening quarantine periods and not requiring quarantine for asymptomatic cases as part of living with Covid-19, he said: “MOH is on the side of caution for now because we don’t know the extent of the Omicron wave that will come. Our posture is one that is very conservative for now”. — DayakDaily
