Specialist: Suspend congregational prayers as migrant workers hard to trace
CORONAVIRUS | A doctor has urged for Friday prayers to be stopped temporarily in order to control the spread of the Covid-19 disease, especially among migrant workers.
“All Friday prayers has to be stopped temporarily. If not, the total of Covid-19 cases will surpass what can be handled by the Health Ministry.
CORONAVIRUS | A doctor has urged for congregational prayers to be stopped temporarily in order to control the spread of the Covid-19 disease, especially among migrant workers.
“All congregational prayers have to be stopped temporarily. If not, the total of Covid-19 cases will surpass what can be handled by the Health Ministry.
“Contact tracing for migrant workers will not be successful.
“Accept short term losses for long term gains,” said respiratory specialist Dr Helmy Haja Mydin in a Twitter posting today.
The doctor, who is based at Pantai Hospital, Kuala Lumpur, later told Malaysiakini that though he does not have any concrete data regarding migrant workers and Covid-19, it is based on his extrapolation.
“We know from experience that a number of foreign workers do not seek medical attention when they develop symptoms.
“The reasons are multifactorial: they can’t afford to skip work, they’re penalised if they take off days, they can’t afford medical treatment, some are here illegally and do not want contact with authorities. Some also do not have fixed addresses and there may be language barriers,” Dr Helmy explained.
All these factors conspire to make it difficult for migrant workers to get treatment in a timely fashion, he said.
“Given the factors above, it is likely that efforts at contact tracing, if there were a Covid-19 positive case, will be difficult,” he added.
As of today, the total of Covid-19 cases in Malaysia has reached 249, including 11 new cases in Sarawak, making us the country with the most cases in Southeast Asia.
Recently, there has been a cluster of cases related to a tabligh gathering at a Sri Petaling mosque. All of the Sarawak cases are also linked to this gathering.
The Health Ministry has estimated that 16,000 people attended the ijtima’ tabligh gathering at the Kuala Lumpur mosque from Feb 27 to March 1.
Of this figure, about 14,500 are believed to be Malaysian.
Former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak has also urged the new Perikatan Nasional government to take action to curb the spread of the disease after the tabligh incident.
He urged the government to instruct all mosques to carry out mandatory disinfection and to allow the rakyat to replace their congregational prayers with solat zohor at home.
“Seeing as the cluster related to the Sri Petaling mosque tabligh event is getting more serious, I hope the PN government will consider instructing all mosques to carry out a mandatory disinfection process (and) to at least allow the rakyat to replace the Friday prayers with solat zohor at home,” he said in a Twitter posting today.
