Australia's cruise ship nightmare, Malaysia's tabligh gathering

In Australia, people have been criticising if not cursing the release of 2700 passengers from the Ruby Princess cruise ship in New South Wales (NSW) without adequate screening. Today, more than half of Australia's Covid-19 cases can be traced to many of those passengers who were affected by the virus, and who on disembarking, returned to their respective homes in a number of Australian States besides NSW.

By contrast in Malaysia, there was no cruise ship situation to blame, as most of the Covid-19 cases and 35 deaths (thus far) can be traced to the Tabligh gathering at the Sri Petaling Mosque.

The recent EMCO (Enhanced Movement Control Order) in Simpang Renggam (Johor) and Hulu Langat (Selangor), virtually curfews although the government kept insisting they aren't curfews, have been because of residents in those places affected by covid infection by the tabligh attendees. The respective EMCO were enforced because of the clusters of tabligh-infected cases.

more than 17,000 devotees attended the gathering 

The virus has been contagiously passed on even unto the 5th generation - here the word 'generation' is not in its usual meaning but related to the virus being passed on to a non-tabligh attendee.

In other words, 'A' attended the tabligh gathering at the Seri Petaling mosque, was infected, returned home and passed the virus onto 'B', who then infected 'C', so on so forth until the 5th generation.

That shows how FAST the contagion acts. Scary.

We can be thankful that our fantastic DG of the MOH, Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah, has taken realistic stock of what will happen, more so when more than 5,000 of the tabligh attendees have not been tested yet. He has prepared for the worst which I dare not even imagine, setting up emergency hospitals with an additional 20,000 beds as well as quarantine stations at strategic locations, co-opting the use of existing buildings such as indoor stadiums, ministries' training institutes, exposition park halls, etc.

If any of those 5000 attendees passed on the virus since returning home (that gathering was at the end of February), I dread to imagine how many people each of them has infected. That's precisely the concerns of Dr Noor Hisham and the basis for his frenetic preparations for the WORST.

As The Sun Daily informed us in its Over 5,000 tabligh attendees yet to get screened:

Over 5,000 attendees of the tabligh gathering at the Sri Petaling Mosque have yet to undergo Covid-19 screening, according to Health director-general Datuk Seri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

He said to date, a total of 17,965 attendees were screened with some 12,842 samples taken.

“Of the total, 1,254 have been tested positive, 7,084 were confirmed negative while 4,504 are awaiting Covid-19 test results,” he told a press conference, here today.

Dr Noor Hisham said out of the 150 new confirmed cases today, 63 were linked to the Sri Petaling Mosque tabligh cluster.

Also as reported by NST, Johor police chief Comm Datuk Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay said the police did not rule out the possibility that there were some villagers who attended the event (tabligh gathering) and did not self-quarantine once they returned.

“There might be some of them who attended a kenduri within their area but did not realise that they have been infected with the virus.”

And we have cardio-loyar-buruk and his ilk STILL indulging in their selfish pursuits, ignoring how they each undermined Dr Noor Hashim's tireless efforts.

Eff their selfish stroll in the park, fishing and loitering around.