KUALA LUMPUR - The decision to adjourn today’s Dewan Rakyat session early falls in line with the Health Ministry's advisory asking people to avoid being in crowded places for long periods of time, Health Director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said.
He said this was because being in these types of places increases the chance of parliamentarians and staff getting infected, especially if anyone among them is positive.
"More so during lunch, if it's a buffet lunch, for example, there's a risk of transmission there. This is the experience that we learned from other countries where we have seen infections being spread in buffets at weddings, in hotels and etc," he said, during his daily press conference today.
"These are all the precautionary measures that we need to take, to protect our parliamentarians as well as make sure we can break the chain of Covid infections."
Earlier today, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Law) Datuk Takiyuddin Hassan revealed that several Dewan Negara officers had tested positive for Covid-19.
This was among the reasons behind the decision to adjourn today’s Dewan Rakyat session at 1pm instead of the usual 5.30pm.
Noor Hisham said the ministry had also conducted screenings on all parliamentarians and staff three days before they entered the complex today.
Through the screenings, the ministry discovered a positive case involving an auxiliary policeman, his wife, and three other colleagues upon contact tracing.
Another case, he said, involved a member of the media and the ministry was awaiting the test results from seven of the person's family members.
Noor Hisham also mentioned the positive case involving Senator Ras Adiba Radzi's personal aide, from which the ministry had identified 12 others who were under quarantine pending screening results.
"They may be in the incubation period, we're not sure so we have quarantined all 12 of them," added Noor Hisham.
With the heightened risks of exposure, Noor Hisham noted additional precautions undertaken in Parliament as the Dewan Rakyat plans to convene over the span of six weeks.
"In between, parliamentarians are exposed to outside areas such as hotels and etc, we don't know who is positive and who is not, we do not know who a carrier is unless we do testing every two weeks for example," he said.
"This is a challenge for us."
The health director-general said even with screenings, the ministry would only detect 30 or 40% of positive cases and these were infected who showed symptoms, not including those who are asymptomatic.
A person's infectivity period starts from two days before showing symptoms and seven days after they subside.
"They have to comply with the SOPs, compliance is very important."
Partitions have been set up in Parliament to ensure one-meter distances between attendees and those in the complex are reminded to always wash their hands and wear masks. - The Vibes, November 2, 2020.
