KL restaurant customer part of new cluster, nine cases reported today

Editor's note: This article is dated Aug 21, 2020. It is now being used as part of a fake Whatsapp message that does not represent the news originally reported by Malaysiakini.

Covid-19 | Malaysia reported nine new cases of Covid-19 today including one new cluster in Kuala Lumpur.

This brings the total number of cases in Malaysia to 9,249 since the beginning of the pandemic.

Of the nine cases, Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah (above) said four were imported cases involving foreigners arriving from the Philippines, Austria, India and Indonesia.

For the locally acquired infections, he said three cases were reported in Kedah involving the Tawar cluster, bringing the size of the cluster to 58 cases so far.

As of noon today, Noor Hisham said 2,733 people had been tested so far as part of screening efforts for this cluster, of which 58 tested positive, 2,426 tested negative and 249 tests are still pending.

In Kuala Lumpur, one case was reported and attributed to the newly discovered Maju cluster, which involves a restaurant in Titiwangsa.

“The first two cases in this cluster namely 'Case 9176' and 'Case 9177' had been reported on Aug 16. They are workers at the restaurant and were detected as a result of random screening at the restaurant and for eatery workers around Kuala Lumpur.

“Following this, contact tracing was conducted where a new case involving a customer at the restaurant was detected. He had a sore throat and headache since Aug 17 and has been admitted to the Sungai Buloh Hospital,” he said.

He said 672 people comprising 16 workers and 656 customers have been tested so far of whom three tested positive and 669 tested negative.

No tests are still pending for this cluster but active case detection and contact tracing is still underway coupled with preventive measures such as sanitisation and decontamination which have already been carried out at the restaurant.

In Sarawak, one foreigner screened before returning to his home country was tested positive for Covid-19 and has been warded at the Sarawak General Hospital.

The patient did not display any symptoms.

Overall, the number of active cases shrunk to 179, with 13 patients having recovered and discharged today.

The number of patients in intensive care units and those requiring ventilator support remains unchanged since yesterday, with seven patients and four patients respectively.

The death toll has also remained unchanged with 125 deaths recorded so far.

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