IT has been 180 days since the movement-control order (MCO) was imposed on March 18, an unprecedented move in Malaysia to combat a new coronavirus pandemic that has infected more than 28 million people and claimed more than 900,000 lives worldwide.

In Malaysia, the current caseload as of yesterday is 9,868, of which 551 were active. The death toll remains at 128 in nearly two weeks.

The MCO’s severe restrictions that shut schools, offices, all non-essential services and gatherings of any kind, and allowed only one person out of the house for essential purchases, was extended three times until May 12.

Slightly more relaxed conditions were implemented under the conditional MCO (CMCO) from then until June 10, and were further eased with the recovery MCO (RMCO), which has now been extended until December 31.

All economic sectors are allowed to reopen except for night spots and entertainment centres, while people are allowed to gather and dine out but under strict conditions that include physical distancing and mask-wearing. 

When the MCO was imposed on March 18, Malaysia had 790 cases. In that period before the CMCO in May, the highest number of new infections recorded in a day was 217 on April 3, when the total number of cases was 3,333. 

Daily fresh cases were mostly in double digits throughout the CMCO, and only two new cases were recorded on June 10, when the RMCO began. On that day, the country had chalked up 8,338 cases in total.

The number of new cases daily tapered down to single digits in early July, and bounced between single and the low double digits for most of that month as well as August and into September.  

As the country’s borders had been and remain closed, most of the new infections during this period were imported cases, detected through the mandatory 14-day quarantine upon arrival from abroad.

However, there was a sudden spike to 62 new cases on September 8, followed by 100 new cases the next day. 

The highest number of cases in this RMCO period so far, has been 182 new infections recorded two days ago, on September 11. 

Another concern is that local transmissions have been exceeding imported cases.

Current active Covid-19 clusters

In the last month, some of these local transmissions resulted from new clusters, mostly in Kedah and Sabah. 

According to the Health Ministry, there have been a total of 106 clusters nationwide. The majority have been declared inactive (after 28 days without any new case), and currently, only 11 clusters are active.

These clusters and the number of infections as of yesterday are:

1. Benteng, in Lahad Datu, Sabah (381)

2. Tawar, Kedah (79)

3. Sungai, Kedah (56)

4. Telaga, Kedah (16)

5. Sala, Kedah (11)

6. Alam, in Bintulu, Sarawak (8)

7. Bunga, Selangor (6)

8. Semenyih immigration depot (3)

9. MV Glen, a ship in Klang, Selangor (3)

10. Maju, Kuala Lumpur (3)

11. Laut, in Kunak, Sabah (4)

There have been fresh local transmissions in the Benteng Lahad Datu cluster daily, in recent days, and infections are currently up to the third generation. There are two index cases in this cluster, both of them undocumented migrants who were held at the Lahad Datu district police headquarters. They were asymptomatic, only testing positive days after being arrested, and had infected a prison officer and other prisoners.

The Laut cluster is the latest, stemming from a Filipino migrant who was deported but sneaked back into the country to visit his wife, who is now also infected.

In other recent clusters, such as the Tawar and Sala clusters in Kedah, director-general of health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah has commented that lack of physical distancing was the likely cause of the coronavirus’ spread.

The Sala cluster’s index case was an individual who visited a patient in hospital, and whose family also came along and are now among those infected.

The Tawar cluster, the source of which is still unknown, involved an individual who attended a funeral. 

Noor Hisham has also raised concerns that even healthcare front-liners may be growing lax about standard operating procedures, such as the Sungai cluster, which involves healthcare workers from a public hospital and a private facility.

He said the significant rise in cases has propelled the r-naught (reproductive number of an infection) to 1.72, which is above the critical level of 1.6.

Earliest cluster

Malaysia’s earliest Covid-19 cases were China nationals who visited the country.

The first cluster, however, stemmed from a Malaysian man who visited Shanghai in mid-January. Then, countries were only beginning to be alerted to news of a novel coronavirus that originated from a wet market in Wuhan, China.

The 52-year old man, a senior executive in UDA Holdings, was numbered case 26, and the cluster was dubbed the “UDA cluster” or the executive cluster.

The cluster was announced on March 4, and case number 26 was deemed the first local Covid-19 case that resulted in 21 infections.

Biggest clusters

The biggest cluster remains the Sri Petaling tabligh cluster, which recorded 3,375 positive cases. The three-day religious gathering drew an estimated 16,000 people.

It was declared inactive on July 8, about four months since the gathering was held from February 27 to March 1. 

The ministry’s disease surveillance experts consider the tabligh cluster, announced on March 11, to have marked the start of the country’s second wave of virus infections, as prior to the gathering, there had been no new cases reported between February 16 and 26.

Since then, other clusters with large numbers of infections, but never as high as the tabligh cluster, have been Benteng Lahad Datu (381), Bukit Jalil immigration depot (653), Pedas (326), Pesantren (238), KL construction site (273), Kuching church (191) and Sendayan (112).

The Bukit Jalil cluster involved an immigration depot that could hold up to 1,500 at a time.  

This cluster was detected in May and followed a series of raids and arrests of undocumented migrant workers around Kuala Lumpur. However, Noor Hisham said the infections were traced to detainees at the depot who had been there since before the MCO in March. 

The Pedas cluster in Negri Sembilan, meanwhile, began with Malaysian workers with the coronavirus who passed it to foreign workers. Cramped conditions in foreign workers’ living quarters caused the virus to spread rapidly among the workers, who were employed at a chicken factory.

Cramped foreign worker’s quarters was also the reason for Covid-19 spreading in the KL construction site cluster.

The Pesantren, Sendayan and Kuching church clusters all involved religious gatherings, and were all detected in the earlier stage of the MCO.

The Kuching church cluster was in fact detected on March 15, just before the MCO was implemented. It involved people who attended a three-day Christian conference, and saw infections up to the fifth generation. This cluster also saw three deaths and 12 patients warded in intensive care units (ICU). 

The Pesantren cluster was detected in April and involved Malaysian students who returned from a religious school in East Java, Indonesia, while the Sendayan cluster in Negri Sembilan involved students from a tahfiz school.

Deadliest cluster

The deadliest cluster is still the Sri Petaling tabligh cluster with 34 deaths recorded. 

Thirty-one victims were Malaysians while three were foreigners. Thirty were male victims, and four others female. 

Noor Hisham has said previously that the high number of male victims was because more men had attended the religious gathering than women. 

More than 40,000 individuals were screened.

A total of 3,341 have since recovered.

MCO controversies

Despite being able to contain the virus, Putrajaya was criticised from a human rights perspective.

More than 700 migrants were detained in raids during the MCO, and the government was slammed for reneging on its promise not to do so against undocumented migrants so as to enable them to come forward for testing.

According to some accounts by rights activists, those rounded up included children and refugees – the Rohingya among them – but government officials have denied this.

Malaysia was also in the spotlight when international broadcaster Al-Jazeera ran its documentary Locked up in Malaysia’s lockdown about the arrests of foreign workers, alleging mistreatment and racism by the authorities. 

The government reacted by launching an investigation into Al-Jazeera, raiding its KL office and questioning its journalists. A migrant worker from Bangladesh, Mohammad Rayhan Kaybir, who was interviewed in the documentary, was also nabbed by police and eventually deported. 

Malaysia was also criticised for turning away refugee boats carrying Rohingya who were attempting to land on shore, purportedly for fear of Covid-19 and in line with the policy to seal borders during the pandemic. 

This was the first time Putrajaya had turned away Rohingya, as Malaysia has traditionally been open to the persecuted minority group who are Muslims. – September 13, 2020.