By Amin Ridzuan Ishak
SHAH ALAM, July 27 — The Selangor government’s move to carry out mass Covid-19 screenings in the state is based on the recommendations made by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in curbing the outbreak, says Datuk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad.
The Kuala Selangor MP, who is also the Selangor Task Force for Covid-19 (STFC) chairman, said the FTTIS (Find, Test, Trace, Isolate and Support) approach, which is used during the screening operations, was introduced by Menteri Besar Dato’ Seri Amirudin Shari since last year.
He said the community testing carried out in Selangor is in line with the WHO ‘mantra’, which emphasises the FTTIS approach.
“The WHO ‘mantra’ emphasised on FTTIS… the Health Ministry (MOH) was too slow to learn, the number of cases can’t be kept secret,” he told the Dewan Rakyat today.
Dr Dzulkefly said analysis using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology was carried out to identify Covid-19 hotspots in the state before the targeted mass screenings were held.
He said at the time, the MOH had only focused on the testing of close contacts.
“We did targeted screenings before a cluster was detected and were able to identify areas with more than 20 per cent infectivity rate.
“If the move was not carried out, it would have triggered more outbreaks causing infections within the community. The infection could have originated from home or workplaces,” he said.
Earlier, Opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, who was supposed to begin the debate representing other MPs, had given way to Dr Dzulkefly to speak after Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba had tabled in the Parliament on the government’s role in controlling the Covid-19 outbreak.
The first phase of Selangor’s community screening initiated during the first and second movement control order (MCO) periods had involved over 26,000 individuals.
A total of 97,565 individuals were screened from May 8 to June 10 during the second phase.
As for the third phase, some 5,582 individuals were screened in eight state constituencies.
