PETALING JAYA: Another new Covid-19 cluster, named the Sala cluster, has been detected in the Yan district located in Kedah, according to the Health Ministry.
That makes Kedah the site of four clusters, namely Sivagangga, Tawar, Kuala Muda and now Sala.
“The first case is a Malaysian man who was detected positive on August 13 through the Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI) clinical surveillance system at Sultanah Bahiyah Hospital, Kedah,“ said health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah, in a press statement today.
Active case detection and contact tracing were conducted on Aug 14 and 3 positive cases were detected today.
“All 3 cases reported today are family members to the first case,“ he said.
Noor Hisham also said 80 close contacts have been screened and from that number, 4 are positive and 76 are still awaiting results.
He added that all the cases in the cluster are Malaysian, and source of infection is still under investigation.
Further, Noor Hisham said an additional 12 cases have been added to the Tawar cluster, with 10 being from Kedah and two in Penang.
“As of today 12pm, as many as 657 people have been screened from this cluster, and 33 people have been found positive,“ he said.
Besides that, he said there was an additional case to the Kuala Muda cluster, which means there are 3 positive cases now.
“So far, 133 people have been screened and 3 are found positive, 27 negative, and 103 are awaiting results,“ he said.
He also announced that as of 12pm today, there were 26 new positive cases, taking the total number of cases to 9,175.
“Of that number, 219 are active cases, whereby six are in the intensive care unit (ICU), and one case needs ventilator assistance,“ he said.
He added three cases have since recovered from Covid-19, leading the number of recoveries to rise to 8,831.
No new deaths were reported, maintaining the number of fatalities at 125.
Of the 26 new cases, he said, three are import cases from overseas involving two Malaysians and one foreigner, while 23 cases are local transmissions.
“The import cases returned from Austria, United States of America, and Vietnam,“ he said.
He also said the local transmission cases involved 20 Malaysians and three foreigners.
