Community immunity survey soon

Ministry to find out how many in population have been exposed to virus

PETALING JAYA: The Health Ministry will be conducting a community immunity survey in due time to find out how many of the population have been exposed to Covid-19, says Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

The Health director-general said the move was proposed because most cases that had been detected were found to be asymptomatic.

“This is another issue that has been discussed – perhaps in time we will do a community survey of immunity in terms of how many of our population have been exposed (to the virus). But so far, it (the exposure) is a very low 0.1% to 0.2%,” he said during his daily press briefing on Covid-19 yesterday.

Noting that those who were asymptomatic could still infect others, Dr Noor Hisham explained that they could not infect others when their virus load was low but conversely, when their virus load was high they could infect others.

“For those who are positive but have no symptoms, two or three days before demonstrating they have the virus, they can infect others because their virus load is high,” he said, adding that these patients would get symptoms like fever, cough and others.

He added that the infection rate of those with symptoms was around eight days.

Dr Noor Hisham also said that local transmission cases within the community were very low but the government would continue its efforts to detect the coronavirus in the country.

His ministry, he said, had been conducting surveillance within the community since January and found that influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory infections (Sari) had decreased.

They had also stepped up surveillance in pre-operative (before operations are conducted) cases, he added.

“Our detection rate here (pre-operative cases) is only 0.1%. We detected 13 cases out of the surveillance that we had done for all the cases going for operation.

“So, 0.1% is actually very low. Even the surveillance done in the community, the detection was only 0.14% to 0.18% cases,” he said.

Dr Noor Hisham opined that there would perhaps be one or two sporadic cases that would pop up in the community, but gave an assurance that these cases could be tracked.

During the press conference, Dr Noor Hisham said the country recorded 38 new Covid-19 cases yesterday, bringing the total number of infections to 7,857 cases.

Of the 38, 26 were imported while 12 were locally transmitted involving six foreigners and six Malaysians.

No deaths were reported for the tenth consecutive day, and the death toll remained at 115.

Separately, Dr Noor Hisham said that 800 prisoners and 700 employees at Sungai Buloh Prison would be tested for Covid-19 after an inmate tested positive for the virus.

The prisoner, a foreigner, has been transferred to the Malaysia Agro Exposition Park Serdang (MAEPS) quarantine centre for isolation and treatment.

He added that the inmate had been incarcerated since 2016 but left the prison on March 13.

The Selangor health authorities, he said, were currently screening the prisoners.

“If we detect a positive case, we will immediately conduct active case detection on those who have been exposed to the prisoner, including the employees at the prison,” he said.