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State health and anti-drugs committee chairman Rahmad Mariman said that based on investigations and screenings by the Melaka Tengah district health office and the state health department, the first index case involved prisoners brought in from Negeri Sembilan last week.
“The (virus) spread in the prison was found to have occurred after the admission of 172 inmates from Negeri Sembilan and 14 people from the A’ Famosa detainees transit centre into the Sungai Udang prison several weeks ago.
“A screening found that 81 of the 186 prisoners were positive for Covid-19,” he said here today.
Subsequently, Rahmad said the health ministry and district health office conducted investigations and screenings at the quarantine block, namely Block Berkat, to detect close contacts, with 256 screenings conducted as of yesterday.
“A total of 76 positive cases were found as of yesterday following the investigations and screenings, bringing the total number of positive cases to 157,” he said.
As such, he said several measures were taken, including ensuring no more entries of new prisoners from other states, ensuring isolations were made in the quarantine block to control infections from spreading to other blocks, and the detection of close contacts if there was an increase in cases.
Yesterday, senior minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob announced that the prison, which has 3,499 inmates, would be placed under EMCO.
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