SOME of the tabligh participants sought by the Health Ministry for Covid-19 testing have gone overseas, said Director-General of Health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah. 

He said they were among the estimated 5,000 Muslim missionaries who have yet to come forward for screening.

“They have activities overseas so they may not be back yet. 

“We have the numbers of those who went overseas and we are trying to trace them with the help of the police,” he said at the ministry’s daily press conference in Putrajaya today.

On Monday, Dr Noor Hisham said authorities are looking for 5,084 attendees of a tabligh event late last month to test them for Covid-19.

He had said the ministry was working closely with police to identify these individuals.

Today, he said it is very difficult to trace infections to clusters, and to determine whether a case is directly linked to the tabligh event.

“For example, a person goes to the mosque. Is it (their infection) related to a sporadic case or did they get infected at the mosque?

“We have found that from the (tabligh) index cases, there are five generations of infections.

“For example, those from the Sri Petaling Mosque cluster continue to infect up to the fifth generation.”

He said the new deaths announced daily might not be directly linked to the tabligh gathering.

“More importantly, they might be related indirectly to the second or third generation of infections.

“Those (deaths) were higher-risk (victims) because of their older age.” – April 1, 2020.