KUALA LUMPUR, May 28 — Malaysia is facing the rise of workplace clusters, which have recorded a high number of new Covid-19 cases, besides the festive and interstate clusters, said Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.
In a statement yesterday, Dr Noor Hisham said a total of 287 workplace clusters involving 17,087 cases were recorded from April 1 until yesterday, with 233 clusters involving 16,785 cases were still active.
“The three states recording the highest number of workplace clusters during the period are Selangor with 74 clusters (25.7 per cent), Johor with 53 clusters (18.4 per cent) and Penang with 31 clusters (10.8 per cent).
“The manufacturing sector is identified as the highest contributor to the cluster compared to other sub-categories with 132 clusters (46 per cent), followed by the service sector with 57 clusters (20 per cent),” he said.
The other sub-categories are the public administration cluster and the construction cluster.
Dr Noor Hisham said although the government had implemented the movement control order (MCO) 3.0 since May 12, the trend of workplace clusters was still not showing a significant decline.
He said a total of 115 workplace clusters with 5,392 cases were reported between May 12 and 26, 62 of which involved the manufacturing sector.
Therefore, he said the Health Ministry welcomed the initiative by the International Trade and Industry Ministry to introduce the new standard operating procedure (SOP) known as Safe@Work to balance up the continuity of manufacturing operations with pandemic control.
“As such, the Ministry of Health is urging all workers to comply with the standard operating procedures to reduce the risk of Covid-19 infections at their workplaces.
“Employers should also play an important role to ensure full compliance of the SOP at their premises,” he added.
— Bernama
