KUALA LUMPUR: While the Petaling District Disaster Management Committee revealed there were 63 Covid-19 positive cases in the 1 Utama Shopping Centre Cluster, the mall's management has disputed the figures, saying that there were only 21 according to their records so far.
This was because not all positive cases were from its own initiated mass testing performed on 6,000 mall and tenant staff for two days from Oct 11, said 1 Utama Shopping Centre management in a statement today.
"From the 6,000, we had yesterday concluded tests and successfully identified 20 tenant staff and one mall management staff as Covid-19 positive.
"These 21 persons have been swiftly quarantined by the Health Ministry to contain the spread and further minimise potential exposure," said the mall management in a Facebook posting today.
Committee chairman Johary Anuar, who is also a Petaling district officer, had last night said the number of infections in the cluster had spiked to 63 cases as of noon yesterday.
He said 16 mall workers and 44 security personnel were Covid-19 positive.
In the same posting, the mall management also said it did not conduct Covid-19 tests as part of its mass testing on 44 security guards who were confirmed to be infected, as pointed out by the Johary.
The 44 security guards, it said, were outsourced from a third party service provider where Covid-19 was contracted through a dormitory and not within the mall premises.
"When we were initially informed by the ministry of one guard being positive through their tracing, we removed all guards under his company for re-testing and to only re-deploy after being cleared," read the statement.
Johary had also said the mall management will now have to ensure its security company hires new personnel and they must not be close contacts of the positive patients.
Of the 63 positive cases in the cluster, Johary said 59 cases were detected in Petaling district while four were out of the district.
Johary said the positive cases involved a mall management staff, 15 mall staff (12 in Petaling district and three out of Petaling district) and 44 security personnel.
He added that three mall visitors were found have contracted the virus where two are from the Petaling district and the other out of the Petaling district.