Benteng LD cluster continues to fuel Covid-19 spread

COVID-19 | The Benteng LD cluster in Sabah continues to fuel most of Malaysia’s growing number of Covid-19 cases, accounting for 40 of the 45 new infections reported today.

Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the 40 new cases from the cluster were all detected at the Tawau prison, involving 34 prisoners and six family members of the prison staff.

The latter group comprises a three-year-old grand-nephew of one prison staff member, and five children ranging from 10 to 23 years old of another staff member.

Thus far, 1,909 people have been screened in Tawau where the prison is located, and 770 people in Lahad Datu where the cluster was first detected.

Some 170 people from the Benteng LD cluster have tested positive for the disease, making it the largest Covid-19 cluster that is still active.

Another 916 people have tested negative, while 1,593 tests are still pending results.

Meanwhile, in Kedah, one new case was detected in the Sungai cluster, and two cases for the Telaga cluster.

The 40th case in the Sungai cluster (Case 6927) is a healthcare worker at a private hospital.

Cases 9625 and 9626 in the Telaga cluster are respectively the 53-year-old mother and 26-year-old sister of Case 9306, who is a healthcare worker at a different hospital.

In addition, one patient at the Simpang Kuala health clinic, Kedah, was screened after showing symptoms and the test came back positive for Covid-19.

So far, 1,456 people have been tested in the Sungai cluster, of which 40 tested positive and 482 are still pending results.

For the Telaga cluster, 4,673 people have been tested so far, of which 13 tested positive and 90 are still pending results.

There was only one imported case for today – a Malaysian returning from Brazil.

The new cases bring the total number of Covid-19 infections in Malaysia to 9,628, of which 9,167 have recovered and discharged, including 24 new discharges today.

The number of cases that are still active is 333 cases, of which nine are being treated in intensive care units and five also require ventilator support.

In comparison, yesterday there were seven cases in ICU, of which four required ventilators.

The death toll remains unchanged at 128.

As for testing, Noor Hisham said 58 labs nationwide have conducted 10,081 RT-PCR tests yesterday, which amounts to 26 percent of the daily testing capacity of 39,304.

As of yesterday, 123,252 pre-surgery Covid-19 tests have been conducted, of which only 65 (0.05 percent) were positive.

For tests conducted using antigen rapid test kits, 194,202 tests have been conducted so far, of which 426 (0.2 percent) were positive.