KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 2 — The Ministry of Health has detected seven Covid-19 positive cases so far from health screenings conducted on individuals that wanted to be present during the ongoing Dewan Rakyat proceedings, said Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.
Earlier, it was reported that the Dewan Rakyat sitting today was cut short after a Dewan Negara staff tested positive for Covid-19
In his daily press briefing today, Dr Noor Hisham revealed that four auxiliary policemen, including one of the policeman’s spouse, a media personnel and a Senator’s aide were found to be Covid-19 positive.
“Today, we found out that the auxiliary policeman was positive and then we did contact tracing and found three of his colleagues and his wife also tested positive. One from the media was also positive and we are screening the family, seven of them, results are not back yet.
“For the Senator, her assistant was positive but we have identified twelve of them (close contacts
), although the assistant was positive, they may be in the incubation period, we are not sure so we have quarantined all 12 of them,” he said.
Dr Noor Hisham said that there is always a risk of individuals at the Dewan Rakyat to be exposed to Covid-19 throughout the scheduled six-week proceedings.
“The parliamentary session now is six weeks, so for six weeks they are exposed to (Covid-19) outside.
“So we do not know who is positive, who is not, we do not know who is the carrier unless we do testing every two weeks, for example,” he said.
Earlier today, Minister Datuk Seri Takiyuddin Hassan proposed to end today’s Parliament sitting at 1pm after several staff in its upper House tested positive for Covid-19.
He invoked Standing Order 12(1) for the motion, saying it is a measure to prevent further infections.
The minister in the Prime Minister’s Department in charge of parliamentary affairs told the Dewan Rakyat when it reconvened this morning that several Dewan Negara staff tested positive for the coronavirus recently.
He said several senators are now also under the suspects’ list, owing to their close contact with the staff members.
Takiyuddin then said that the Parliament, however, has been sanitised in accordance with the SOPs.
