KUALA LUMPUR, Apr 21 — Health Director-General Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said today that the government’s move to force Malaysians returning home from abroad to be quarantined for 14 days was the right one as they managed to avert having a large number of positive cases.

He said since April 3, they detected only 77 positive cases which amounted to 0.97 percent of the total returnees.

"Even though the number of cases has been reducing we at the Ministry of Health (MOH) found positive cases among the overseas returnees.

"This was expected as there are 180 countries infected with Covid-19 so our early move to isolate and quarantine all overseas returnees was the right one,” said Dr Noor Hisham during his daily briefings on Covid-19.

He said from the 12,160 returnees, 7,910 individuals were tested and 77 came out positive. He added that their proactive measures to make sure they isolate the cases resulted in early detection and prevention of further infections.

All those who tested positive are quarantined in Melaka (37), Kuala Lumpur, Federal Territories and Putrajaya (32), Sarawak and Johor (3) and Selangor (2).