LABUAN, Aug 19 — The Labuan Disaster Management Committee has prepared the standard operating procedures (SOPs) for shipping-related sectors to mitigate the spread of Covid-19 on the duty-free island.
Labuan Health Department director Dr Ismuni Bohari said the SOPs had been submitted to the central National Security Council (NSC) for approval.
“The SOPs for the shipping-related sectors had been thoroughly discussed with all relevant government agencies, taking into the possible spreads of Covid-19, the people’s safety and the continuity of the economic sectors,” he told Bernama today.
Dr Ismuni said the preparation of the SOPs is the decision of the federal government after taking into consideration the increase of positive cases nationwide.
“We have taken into account the concerns of the shipping industry, therefore, the 21 days of quarantine for foreign ships and 14 days for domestic ships has been reduced to 14 and 10 days, respectively,” he said.
He said the quarantine period has also been further reduced to 10 days for ship crews from overseas and seven days for domestic ships with negative antigen rapid test kit (RTK-Ag) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests result onboard upon arrival in Labuan only.
“We have reduced further the quarantine period by taking into account the journey from the last port as the day of the calculation,” he said.
Ismuni said the committee had taken into account the request of the industry of not requiring a complete vaccination as a precondition for the entry of ships.
“And we have also allowed the resumption of the shipping entire operation as requested but there is still a need to comply with the SOPs…and this is to be fair to other economic sectors in Labuan.
“However, given the situation of Covid-19 around the world and in Malaysia had not shown significant positive improvement, we are unable to consider applications to reduce the SOPs due to the possible spike in cases and we will only review the SOPs after the situation subsides,” he added. — Bernama
