Tabligh clusters remain a major & dangerous problem

Extracts from finance-twitter:

Finally, New Coronavirus Cases Plunge To 2-Digit – But Here’s Why It’s Too Early To Pop The Champagne.

With the promotion of Muar district from orange to red zone, Malaysia now has a total of 27 red zones, categorised as districts with more than 41 cases of Covid-19. Like it or not, it’s too early to say the pandemic is being contained, even with the latest drop of confirmed cases.

It certainly didn’t instil confidence when Dr Noor Hisham also reveals that the Health Ministry has identified 8,616 tahfiz madrassah students that need to be tested and screened for the pathogen. He said – “So far, we have screened 1,736 students at the schools, while many of the others have already gone back to their homes.”





Apparently, 217 of the 1,736 students screened have been tested positive – a staggering 12.5% rate – involving four Coronavirus clusters of four madrassah schools in four states (Pahang, Penang, Selangor and Melaka). While the primary Tabligh cluster has shrunk from 60% to 40% of the total cases, other sub-clusters connected to the religious gathering have slowly but surely emerged.

Just 3 days ago, The Health Ministry has identified 25 clusters and sub-clusters of the Covid-19 disease in the country. Now the total number of clusters and sub-clusters has increased to 28. Make no mistake. The main Tabligh cluster at the Sri Petaling Masjid Jamek mosque has not stopped spreading. Dr Noor unveiled that the Sri Petaling cluster had an increase of 20 new positive cases as of Wednesday.

There has been silence from police over the remaining Tabligh religious members who refused to come forward to be tested. For example, what’s the status of the 3,800 Tabligh members whom Senior Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob announced that the police was still tracking down, not to mention a conflicting figures from the Health Minister that 5,084 had yet to step forward for tests?





In the same breath, the state of Johor police chief Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay said recently that of the 2,086 Johor participants who attended the Tabligh gathering, only 1,220 of them had undergone screenings in hospitals. To the remaining 866 attendees, the police chief – like a broken record – merely warned that they would face strict action by the authorities.