Health DG: Workplace clusters down, thanks to vaxxing

PETALING JAYA: Workplace Covid-19 clusters have been on the downtrend since August last year, when more than half of Malaysians had been fully vaccinated, Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said.

The workplace made up more than half of the 6,774 clusters reported since the start of the pandemic.The vaccination drive in Malaysia began on Feb 24 last year and by August, more than 55% of Malaysians had received two doses.

Dr Noor Hisham said the highest number of workplace clusters was reported from Aug 15-21, 2021, but it started declining a month later.

“This is in line with the success of the vaccination programme, although there was movement of people during this recovery phase,” he said in a statement yesterday.

He said a total of 542,296 cases were reported from the 6,774 clusters identified between Jan 25, 2020, when the first case was reported, and last Saturday.

Of that, 6,280 clusters have ended while 494 are still active.

Workplaces accounted for 3,494 clusters or 58.46% of the total clusters reported in that period, followed by community (20.41%), detention centres (7.62%) and education (7.22%).

Religious activities, high-risk and imported clusters made up the remaining 6.35%.

“A total of 201,281 or 63% of the overall cases from the workplace clusters involved non-citizens,” Dr Noor Hisham said.

He said these clusters were identified in the manufacturing, services, public administration, agriculture, construction and mining and quarrying sub-sectors.