KUALA LUMPUR, August 13 — The Ministry of Health (MOH) reported today 15 new Covid-19 cases, including a new cluster in Baling, Kedah, whose source of infection of the index case has yet to be identified.
According to MOH, the Tawar cluster involves 10 positive cases so far, out of which nine were reported today. Baling MP Abdul Azeez Abdul Rahim told Parliament earlier today about a Covid-19 cluster in his constituency.
The first case (Patient 9,113) reported in the Tawar cluster in Baling is a Malaysian man, a trader, who attended a religious ceremony of the death of a family member from July 31 to August 1 that was attended by 30 people.
On August 8, he experienced chest pain and fever symptoms and immediately sought medical treatment at a medical centre and was detected with coronavirus on August 11.
Following that, active case detection and close contact screening were done. A total of 86 of his close contacts were screened, out of which nine cases tested positive, 21 tested negative, while 56 people are still waiting for the test result.
The nine positive cases were all his family members, including three with symptoms. Nine of the confirmed Covid-19 patients in the Tawar cluster, including Patient 9,113, had attended the religious ceremony.
Out of the 15 new Covid-19 cases reported today, 11 were locally transmitted and four were imported infections. Besides the nine new cases in the Tawar cluster, the remaining two community transmissions were unlinked, which means the source of infection is unknown.
One community transmitted case was reported during a pre-surgery screening at a medical centre in Kuala Lumpur. Another locally transmitted case was reported in Kuala Lumpur, involving a foreigner during a pre-departure screening.
MOH also reported four new imported Covid-19 cases involving Malaysians returning from Indonesia (three cases in Selangor) and Yemen (one case in Kuala Lumpur).
There are currently 183 active cases, including two patients in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and none requiring a ventilator.
MOH also reported that the student from a school in Seri Pantai, Kuala Lumpur, who was said on social media to have contracted the coronavirus, has tested negative with a confirmatory Covid-19 test.
Close contact screening was done on 54 individuals, including 43 individuals from the school, four family members, five family friends, and three health personnel. All of them tested negative for Covid-19.
Four Covid-19 patients were discharged from hospital today, bringing the cumulative number of recovered patients to 8,821. The death toll remains at 125 as no new deaths were recorded today.
MOH also informed the public that so far, there have been no reports of positive cases from a gathering held outside the court in Jalan Duta, Kuala Lumpur, two weeks ago, during former prime minister Najib Razak’s SRC International corruption trial.
Three clusters have also ended as of today — the Kuching Medical Centre cluster, person-under-investigation (PUI) Pitakwa cluster and PUI Shirala cluster .
