PUTRAJAYA: There are five active Covid-19 clusters as of today, including two new clusters at Sepang immigration depot and a Kuala Lumpur construction site.
The other three are the Bukit Jalil and Semenyih immigration depot clusters and the church gathering cluster.
Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said 44 new cases were detected at the Kuala Lumpur construction site, of which 43 were migrant workers.
The Bukit Jalil cluster recorded 66 new cases, raising the total to 126, while Sepang cluster has 29 new cases with a total of 36 cases to date. The church cluster in Sarawak saw an addition of one new case today, bringing the total to 191.
Semenyih has recorded 17 new cases and the total number of cases stands at 66 where 65 of them are immigrant workers and one administrative staff.
"We will screen everyone, including close contacts of the staff. We are unsure if the staff contracted the disease from the detainees or the community. We are still investigating it," he said today.
Dr Noor Hisham said the high number of infections among migrant workers could be due to their living conditions.
He said while there were SOPs in place to ensure proper housing is provided for workers at construction sites and factory workers, their living conditions outside must be looked into.
"In Masjid India, for example, there are close to 30 people living in a small space. Crowded and confined spaces are a factor and we need to look into how they can maintain social distancing and practice good hygiene.
"We do not have a vaccine for Covid-19 yet, social distancing is the vaccine we have at the moment."
He said the Health Ministry has so far screened 27,383 foreigners, 1,519 (or 5.5 per cent) of whom tested positive for Covid-19.
"Of those, 462 foreigners (30.4 per cent) are currently undergoing treatment for the coronavirus in hospitals, one (0.2 per cent) has been warded in intensive care unit (ICU), and four deaths (0.3 per cent) had been recorded among this group."
Meanwhile, on the Seri Petaling cluster, Dr Noor Hisham said 41,207 samples from the Seri Petaling cluster had been screened and tested, of which 3,369 (8.18 per cent) tested positive, and 3,034 (90.06 per cent) had recovered.
"The cluster, involving five generations has 302 (8.96 per cent) active cases and has recorded 33 deaths (0.98 per cent)."
On tahfiz schools and madrasah nationwide, he said 20,592 students, teachers and staff at 378 institutions have been identified for screening, with 15,024 (73 per cent) having been tested, and 683 (4.5 per cent) returning positive.
Of the positive cases, 96 (14.3 per cent) have shown Covid-19 symptoms, while 587 others (85.9 per cent) were asymptomatic.
He said that Covid-19 tests were also carried out at 390 wet-markets nationwide, involving 41,435 traders and workers; and 32,075 (77.4 per cent) samples taken.
A total of 271 (0.8 per cent) Covid-19 cases were reported, of which 37 (13.6 per cent) were symptomatic and 234 (86.4 per cent) were found to be asymptomatic.
On screening at 279 old folks homes, he said 11,129 residents, caretakers and staff have been identified with 9,429 (84.7 per cent) samples taken.
Of this, he said 23 (0.2 per cent) tested positive, three (13 per cent) symptomatic and 20 (87 per cent) asymptomatic.
In a related matter, Dr Noor Hisham said five new Covid-19 cases were detected among the latest Malaysians returning from overseas, bringing the total number to 446.
"Two of them were from Egypt, two from Pakistan and one from Indonesia. From April 3 to May 25, 40,716 individuals had returned from abroad and placed under the mandatory 14-day quarantine period, of which, 33,092 of them had since completed the quarantine."
Meanwhile, he said Malaysia's Covid-19 laboratory capacity stands at 27,667, with 15,772 samples (57 per cent) tested at 45 public and private laboratories as of May 24.
He added that 2,810 samples were tested using the Antibody Rapid Test Kit (RTK) for antigen detection and 44 cases tested positive.