THOSE under quarantine or asymptomatic are not allowed to work, said Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah. 

“The answer is no because we do not know when they will (become) positive for Covid-19,” the director-general of health said in a press conference today. 

Noor Hisham said there have been proposals for green bubbles to be established at workplaces so that staff under quarantine can work in isolation away from those infected. 

“The incubation period is 14 days and when they become positive they can infect the whole factory as well,” he said. 

He said the index patient of the Sivagangga cluster was a prime example. He returned to work while under quarantine after testing negative in the first swab test. He later went on to be the source of the cluster that infected 45 people. 

Meanwhile, on positive cases among workers of a certain factory linked to the Teratai cluster being discharged earlier, Noor Hisham said the patients were discharged after completing 10 days of treatment. 

This includes the period spent under quarantine.

He said according to the World Health Organisation, patients who are asymptomatic and have undergone treatment for 10 days can be discharged. 

He said while they might be positive, they are no longer infectious. 

Top Glove Corp Bhd recently said 500 of its workers were discharged from the hospital after being hospitalised for an average of six days. – November 30, 2020.