PUTRAJAYA: There is an urgent need to educate foreign workers on the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) under the Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO) following a surge in Covid-19 cases.
Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said of the 103 new positive cases recorded today, only 12 involved Malaysians, while the remaining were foreigners.
"If all Malaysians comply with the SOPs for the next couple of weeks, perhaps there won't be exponential surge after Raya.
"Malaysians in general adhere to the social distancing SOPs set by the government aimed at breaking the chain of Covid-19 infections. But do the foreign workers practise social distancing? We need to educate migrant workers on the SOPs as well, social distancing, hand-washing, wearing masks and avoiding confined and crowded spaces.
"Covid-19 infection is not really a matter of the sectors (involved), but rather, the issue of accommodation where the workers are not able to practise social distancing. All the clusters involved come to a common conclusion – confined accommodation – and this is a issue that we have to solve together," he told a Press conference today.
He said it was impractical to have some six to seven million foreign workers in Malaysia stop working temporarily until they were screened and tested for Covid-19.
"Our laboratory capacity is maybe around 30,000 (daily). If we stop all sectors, we may need to wait for months before the sectors can resume operation. So, we allow some of the sectors to reopen, with screenings conducted from time to time.
"And also, if we are being screened today, we could still be exposed to the virus (present) in the community tomorrow.
"So, we are taking targeted approach through acute case detection and trace the patients' close contacts; those who test negative would be quarantined, while those who test positive are sent to the hospital."
He said it was still too early to decide whether to lift the CMCO which ends on June 9.