Covid-19: Over 11% of cases on Thursday (March 18) linked to prison, detention clusters

PUTRAJAYA: More than 11% of Malaysia’s new Covid-19 cases on Thursday (March 18) have come from clusters linked to prisons and immigration detention centres.

In his daily Covid-19 statement, Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said 99 cases came from an outbreak at the Semuja immigration depot in Serian, Sarawak.

“About 142 cases on Thursday, or 11.7% of the country’s total, are linked to prisons and immigration detention centres.

“This includes the Semuja immigration depot with 99 cases, the Penjara Jalan Harapan cluster in Selangor with 32 new cases, as well as five other prison clusters in the country.

“The Semuja cluster was uncovered from a targeted screening exercise on detainees at the depot. From 584 individuals that were screened, 99 positive cases have been found, ” said Dr Noor Hisham.

On Thursday, Malaysia recorded 1,213 more cases of Covid-19, taking the country’s total confirmed infections to 328,466.

Six are imported infections while the rest are local transmissions.

Selangor remained the state with the highest number of cases, with 352 new cases, or 29.1% of Malaysia’s total.

Sarawak saw a rise in new cases, recording 303 infections - which is 25% of the country’s total.

Three more people died due to Covid-19, bringing the country’s death toll up to 1,223.

Dr Noor Hisham said the cases involved a 59-year-old woman at Hospital Sibu in Sarawak, an 82-year-old man in Hospital Kudat in Sabah and a 60-year-old man at Hospital Raja Perempuan Zainab II Kota Baru in Kelantan.

There were 1,503 patients who have been discharged, which means 312,461 people in the country have recovered from the coronavirus to date.

The number of active cases has now gone down to 14,782.

Of that total, 155 are currently under intensive care treatment, with 54 requiring ventilator support.