THE high number of Covid-19 cases in Negeri Sembilan today was due to active clusters, said director-general of health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

“Out of 240 new cases reported in Negeri Sembilan today, 236 were from existing clusters, and the Cergas cluster in Seremban, which involves a factory, is one of them.

“This place is close to the Sofi cluster detected earlier, which involves a Tahfiz school. So, there is a possibility of infection in the area.

“We have not put the area under TEMCO because we have identified the place and the company has stopped operation for the time-being and we have actively carried out screening, disinfection and sanitisation work in the place,” he said at a press conference in Putrajaya today.

Noor Hisham said that besides implementing the conditional movement-control order (CMCO), the ministry would not hesitate to impose a temporary conditional movement-control order (TEMCO) on high risk areas.

He said continued risk assessments were being done for all states and that they would study an area before imposing a partial lockdown.

Despite expressing his concern over the increasing cases in the Klang Valley and Negeri Sembilan, Noor Hisham admitted that it was hard to control the movement of the public in these places.

Citing Sabah as an example, he said that people from the state will be screened when they leave but admitted it was impossible to do that in the Peninsula.

“If Sabah is a red zone, those going out will be screened and (we) make sure their movement is controlled.

“But if we look at the red zones in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor and Putrajaya, we cannot control the mobility of almost 6 million people. This is our worry.

“If they are infected and they travel to other green zones, maybe they would bring the infection together. So, that is why we imposed CMCO,” he said.

He said the CMCO is a proactive and pre-emptive move to control the spread of the infections to other green zones.

He said, with the CMCO, they have managed to reduce the number of green zones turning to orange or red. – November 12, 2020.