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Focus is on targetted groups, no mass testing

PUTRAJAYA: The Health Ministry will remain focused on targetted Covid-19 screening instead of going for mass testing, Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said.

The eight target groups are the Masjid Jamek Seri Petaling tabligh cluster, tahfiz, the Enhanced Movement Control Order (EMCO) areas and active clusters, senior citizen homes, foreign workers at construction sites in red zones, health care workers and Malaysian returnees.

Dr Noor Hisham said there were 45 labs which had tested 26,673 samples, which showed that the country has the capacity to test.

"We are using the opportunity to focus on our eight targetted groups rather than to test everyone. We aim for high impact, reasonable cost and good outcome.

"If we were to test everyone, the next question is how offen do we do that? If you test everyone and isolate them, that is fine, but they are still exposed to the community and the virus is still there," he said.

He also pointed out that the ministry had used the same targetted approach during the three phases of the Movement Control Order (MCO) and it had shown results.

"Obviously, we managed to flatten the Covid-19 curve. We won the battle but not the war," he said during a press daily briefing at the ministry today.

Dr Noor Hisham said foreign workers at construction sites in red zones such as Kuala Lumpur and Selangor were targetted as there was an outbreak while it was unnecessary for those at green zones in Perlis.

He said the ministry will screen the foreign workers and encourage their employees to do the same.

He also called on the public to play their part to break the Covid-19 transmission by strictly following the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and take necessary safety precautions during the current Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO) which was enforced on May 4.

"If the public can comply with the SOPs, then rest assured, we can bring down the R-Nought further. It was 3.55 before the MCO and today it is 0.3.

"It is up to us now whether it can be brought down further or it will increase in time. So we are monitoring our daily cases and our compliance in terms of social responsibility, social discipline and the ministry's SOP," he said.

On a separate matter, Dr Noor Hisham said contact tracing will be done on the friends of Case 110, who had reportedly died while walking from Segamat, Johor, to Terengganu.

He said the cause of infection will also be investigated.

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