PUTRAJAYA, May 15 — Legal action may be taken against individuals who persist in exposing high-risk groups like children and senior citizens to possible Covid-19 infection by bringing them to public places, said Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.
He said the authorities might take action under the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act 1988 (Act 342) if the public continued to ignore their advice.
“The Health Ministry (MOH) is using the approach of giving advice, asking people not to bring high-risk groups to public places, including malls and hospitals, except for appointments.
“Now we just advise but we may resort to taking action under Act 342, that is issuing summons or court action,” he told a daily news conference on Covid-19 here today.
He was asked whether MOH would consider including the prohibition on taking high-risk groups to public places in the standard operating procedure (SOP) for the conditional movement control order (CMCO).
According to news reports, many people were still bringing children and senior citizens to public places.
In fact, Senior Minister (security cluster) Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob had also warned that the government could take action if the people continued to ignore its advice not to expose vulnerable groups to the risk of infection.
Meanwhile, Dr Noor Hisham advised the people to have a homely closed-door Hari Raya celebration this time around.
He said although this is unprecedented, it needed to be done in order to protect their family members and community from Covid-19 infections.
“If we can practise this, (or) to have a curfew on your own home to make sure no outsiders are coming, it will be good.
“This is something that we can do. Stop visiting from one home to another; if we take all the precautionary measures, we can protect our family members,” he added.
Meanwhile, on the issue of some tahfiz schools not coming forward to have their students tested, he said MOH was working closely with the Malaysian Islamic Development Department (Jakim) to identify the schools concerned.
“We are also actively going to schools, identify the schools and doing the testing. It is not to stigmatise but to protect and make sure they do not transmit the infection to others,” he said.
He said MOH had been doing active case tracing for tahfiz schools and had screened more than 50 per cent or 13,288 of the students, teachers and staff of the 370 tahfiz schools it identified.
— Bernama
