KUALA LUMPUR, May 6 — In the face of insufficient test kits available for such a monumental undertaking, Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah today assured the public that the Health Ministry will thoroughly screen some 2.5 million migrant workers in the country for Covid-19.
Dr Noor Hisham again pointed out the ministry will carry on with its targeted approach based on localities within the foreign workers’ communities in the Klang Valley and Selangor red zones to ensure that they are being tested for Covid-19 even if it is time consuming.
“In one go obviously we do not have enough test kits, so we need to focus in terms of targeted approach for foreign workers in Selangor and the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, for example.
“This is our priority. With that we have the capacity. It will take time surely but at least we will be able to screen them,” he said during his daily Covid-19 press briefing here.
He pointed out that the main issue concerning migrant workers was that many of them resided in cramped housing accommodations with many of the residents employed in different sectors such as construction or retail.
To date, the ministry has screened 22,339 non-Malaysians with 986 testing positive for Covid-19 and four fatalities recorded.
Dr Noor Hisham said the ministry has thus far prioritised three focus groups — migrant workers, tahfiz schools and those from the Sri Petaling tabligh gathering cluster — as the country entered its conditional movement control order (CMCO) period earlier this week.
He said new Covid-19 cases reported throughout the country remained under control, citing the effectiveness of the movement control order (MCO).
“We have identified these migrant workers as one of the target groups and we will screen them, especially those from the red zones in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur. Our focus is that we will screen them as soon as possible.
“So for these three groups, we will identify the locality and take acute case detection measures. If we look at today’s cases, it is still two digits so it’s controlled. We are expecting the numbers to fall further in the coming week,” he said.
Yesterday, Senior Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob said migrant workers must be screened for Covid-19 to prevent Malaysia from experiencing a spike in cases similar to Singapore.
This came after he pointed out that there were recent spikes in Covid-19 cases and the emergence of a new cluster linked to migrant workers.
