COVID-19: Health Ministry targets tahfiz students for testing

PUTRAJAYA, April 15 -- The Health Ministry is now tracing all students from ‘madrasah tahfiz’ (tahfiz religious schools) to test them for COVID-19.

Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said so far the Health Ministry had been informed that there were 8,616 madrasah tahfiz students across Malaysia.

He said a total of 1,736 madrasah tahfiz students had been screened, with 217 or 10 per cent of them testing positive for COVID-19.

“The Health Ministry sees that after the tabligh cluster, the target now is madrasah tahfiz students,” Dr Noor Hisham said, explaining that while the 1,736 students had been screened at the schools, most of the other students had returned to their respective homes before the imposition of the Movement Control Order (MCO).

“We are now working with the police and other agencies to screen and undertake COVID-19 testing on these tahfiz students,” he said at the daily press conference on COVID-19 developments, here today.

For the record, four madrasah located in Jerantut (Pahang), Penanti (Penang), Sungai Lui (Selangor) and Jasin (Melaka), are among the COVID-19 clusters detected in the country. 

On the latest updates on these four madrasah clusters, Dr Noor Hisham said two new cases had been reported at the school in Jerantut, bringing the cumulative number of cases to 64.

Asked about the church conference cluster in Sarawak and whether an Enhanced Movement Control Order should be enforced in the locality, Dr Noor Hisham said there was no need for it at the moment.

He explained that the cluster was still contained, with no new cases reported.

-- BERNAMA