Don’t despair about the increase in Covid-19 cases in S’gor, it is the result of aggressive testing, says Dr. Dzulkefly



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PETALING JAYA: Malaysians should not despair over the recent expected increase in Covid-19 cases, as this is due to aggressive screening in Selangor, says former health minister Datuk Seri Dr. Dzulkelfy Ahmad.

“Be careful! The numbers may increase even more. Why? Because now we are doing more tests, especially mandatory (tests) on foreign workers.

“But don’t despair!” he said in a Twitter post on Saturday. (December 12th)

Although he regretted that Selangor had contributed some 1,428 new cases out of a record 2,234 cases on Thursday (December 10), he said tests were needed to slow the spread of the virus.

Prior to this, the highest number of cases in a day was 2,188, which was recorded on November 24.

Dr. Dzulkefly urged authorities not to publicly tout the daily number of Covid-19 cases as a “marker”, but to seek more effective ways to combat the virus.

“Isolate cases in the community sooner and reduce transmission faster.

“Leverage technology to streamline, optimize and monitor the efficiency of community testing,” he said in another Twitter post.

While predicting that the number of Covid-19 cases in Malaysia will exceed that of China next week, Dr. Dzulkelfy said the “silver lining” here was that the death rate was lower than that of South Korea and Australia.

Malaysia recorded a cumulative total of 80,309 since the pandemic outbreak here in March, while there are about 91,000 cases in China.

The government has imposed mandatory Covid-19 screening for 1.7 million foreign workers as of December 1 in view of the high number of cases involving the group.

The first phase of the Covid-19 detection involving 888,342 foreign workers would take place in Selangor, Labuan, Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Negri Sembilan.



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