KUALA LUMPUR: The Health Ministry has detected a total of 16 clusters of Covid-19 cases involving those who went to Saudi Arabia to perform the umrah since Nov 25 last year.
Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said seven of these clusters involve the Omicron variant, six listed as presumptive Omicron while awaiting results of Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS), and three more are from the non-Omicron variant.
The Keratong 5 Saudi cluster from Rompin, Pahang is an Omicron index case cluster with the highest number of cases at 36.
"Two are imported cases and 34 others are close-contact families. The index case cluster spans Pahang and Johor with a positivity rate of 81.8 per cent," Dr Noor Hisham said in a statement today.
There are two more umrah returnee-linked clusters from the same district – the Rumah Kedai Keratong 5 Saudi and Keratong 2 Saudi clusters, he said.
The Rumah Kedai Keratong 5 Saudi cluster is a presumptive Omicron cluster from one imported case and eight other close contacts.
The positivity rate of the cluster is 75 per cent.
Keratong 2 Saudi cluster on the other hand is not an Omicron-related cluster with two imported cases and nine more from close contacts.
The positivity rate of this cluster is 78.6 per cent, said Dr Noor Hisham.
A total of 456 umrah returnees were screened with 219 confirmed positive to Covid-19 cases.
Dr Noor Hisham said all the cases are under Category 1 and 2 of Covid-19 with no cases admitted to Intensive Care Unit (ICU), nor deaths.
"The increasing cases from the reported clusters of umrah returnees are considered serious and worrying because it occurs in a short period of time as well as the spread of imported infection cases to families occurs quickly.
"The cause of the infection is due to not observing standard operating procedures (SOP) while performing umrah.
"In addition, while quarantined at home after returning from performing umrah, there are activities such as visiting those who have just returned from the holy land, and others," he added.