KUALA LUMPUR, Apr 21 — The Ministry of Health’s (MOH) early efforts in detecting patients with influenza-like illnesses (ILI) and severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) have resulted in eight patients detected positive for Covid-19.

Health Director-General Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said they had been collecting samples from patients with the three symptoms since February at the chosen clinics across the country.

"We’ve been doing the SARI and ILI detection since February 2 and February 23 respectively and taken samples from anyone with pneumonia.

"To date we found 56 positive cases from 2,669 samples which makes up 2.1 per cent of the total SARI patients. Whereas the ILI detection we started since week nine of the epidemiologi which began on feb 23,” said Dr Noor Hisham today during his daily Covid-19 briefing in Putrajaya.

He said they started with eight chosen clinics called sentinel site, in order to detect if the virus had infected certain communities.

He revealed that they found eight cases positive for Covid-19 among the ILI patients from 1,280 samples.

As such he said these early detection activities and the process is necessary as an early warning system for them in case they find another cluster of outbreaks.

"We at MOH will continue to strengthen out surveillance activities in Malaysia and take a targeted approach to curb the spread of Covid-19.

"Among our activities are focusing on the high risk groups like the tahfiz school students and foreign workers as well as making sure people adhere to the enhanced movement control order and conduct active case detection from house to house,” added Dr Noor Hisham.