YOURSAY | ‘Why are religious leaders so silent? Should they not entreat their flock to toe the MCO?’

MCO enhanced for 7 Hulu Langat villages after religious school hit by Covid-19

Roger 5201: If all schools are closed since the lockdown, how come 71 people of 274 in the Hulu Langat religious school are infected?

Did the authorities instruct the school to take measures to implement social distancing and discourage communal activities? Was this fresh outbreak due to lack of awareness, poor communication or wilful disregard for our nationwide lockdown?

Vela: Chances are they were infected right before the movement control order (MCO). The incubation period is anywhere between five and 14 days.

Most of them probably developed symptoms a week into the incubation. The spread of Covid-19 is due to lack of awareness. After all, the first few symptoms are of the normal flu.

P Ramlee: Simpang Renggam, Hulu Langat and I think more kampung will surface soon.

Please don't wait for the case to spike to take enhanced movement action as it may have spread way beyond the 71 patients,

The government should proactively identify this type of area and isolate them as soon as possible. This is the critical step that must be done quickly to stop the spread.

Anonymous 2413471460628504: Why are the Muslim religious leaders so silent? Should they not entreat their flock to toe the MCO?

They are always so loud and specious about everything else but in this matter, when life and death is on the line, they are as quiet as mice.

Where is the compassion and the urgency to protect their fellow human beings, and especially their Muslim brethren, from harm?

Anonymous_1576493110343.18461576492847530: Obviously, and not to put a slant to it, the government should realise the huge elephant in the room by now.

The incubation period is two weeks. We are going to see a spike in the next few days.

The frontliners are doing an excellent job but the leadership arms have to work in tandem, and narrow down the religious schools pronto. This is akin to holding the nation to ransom and totally not fair.

And pray tell, why is PAS leader Abdul Hadi Awang quiet so far? Isn't he the self-assigned messiah for his flock? And religious affairs minister, where art thou?

It's not an assumption, but the MCO gives much room for contemplation and questions that need to be answered.

Enhanced MCO for two areas in Kluang after spike in Covid-19 cases

Black Thorn: The government must take drastic actions and make these simple village folks understand the dangers of the virus and why MCO is necessary.

There will be many more of these areas where the kampung people don’t realise they are infected and spreading the virus among themselves since they are quite close-knitted communities.

Otherwise, many may not live to celebrate Hari Raya.

Prudent: Just testing for the virus using the RT-PCR (reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) is not fast enough to corral all the virus-spreaders.

This is because the virus reportedly cannot be detected by the test for about two days and as long as five days after infection and the infected person remains asymptomatic during this period.

The test itself takes about a day to get results and may return a false negative if tested within two days of infection. In the meantime, the infected person will shed and spread the virus by the millions, if not by the billions.

China’s Hubei province, on Feb 13, 2020, switched the method of identifying infected persons to the clinical method, i.e. the use of chest imaging for even faster results. This is what Mike Ryan, a director of World Health Organization (WHO) said about the method:

“In other words, in Hubei province only, a trained medical professional can now classify a suspected case of Covid-19 as a clinically confirmed case on the basis of chest imaging, rather than having to have a laboratory confirmation.

“This allows clinicians to move and report cases more quickly, without having to wait for lab confirmation, assuring that people get to clinical care more quickly and also allows public health responses in terms of contact tracing and other important public health measures to be initiated.”

This means that if the chest imaging shows lesions in the lungs, he is regarded as an infected person and quarantined immediately while further tests are conducted to confirm, and contact-tracing, based on the infected person, initiated immediately.

The number of new infections in Hubei province, including the city of Wuhan, spiked up by 14,000 new infections in a single day as a result of this method.

But the chain of transmission from undetected infected persons was broken. The virus dies if it cannot transmit to new hosts - either killed by the immune system of the infected person or dies with the person. The virus is also racing against time to find new hosts for survival.

The number of new infections in Hubei province and the rest of China dwindled rapidly since the Feb 13 spike and reached zero infections by March 18. And with a single exception of one day when one new local infection was reported, it has sustained zero new infections since then. New infections now in China are virtually all imported.

This indicates that China had successfully broken the chain on the transmission that sustained the virus.

The Health Ministry should now use this method of clinical analysis of chest imaging, beginning with all the inhabitants in the sealed off areas of Kampung Dato' Ibrahim Majid and Bandar Baharu Dato' Ibrahim Majid in Kluang, in order to effectively cut off the transmission of the virus to new hosts and effectively contain the virus.

Please consult China on this method of clinical diagnosis of the virus.

Han G: With the stricter lockdown in place in these areas, the Health Ministry will be able to expand further testing, surveillance and quarantine.

Hopefully, we could see the success coming out from the enhanced movement control. Difficult situation requires tough measures.

JD Lovrenciear: So much of burden is being placed on our remarkable healthcare frontlines and police and others enlisted.

If only people cooperated and exercised their moral obligation, we would not have to struggle with an enhanced movement control order.

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