THE Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM) today expressed its concern with the repeated allegations that factories are the primary source of COVID-19 infections in the country and is compelled to clear the misconception.
“It is evident from data released by the Health Ministry (MOH) on June 21, 2021 that 69% (398,846 out of 578,105) of COVID-19 cases recorded this year until June 19, 2021 were sporadic cases that are detected in the community and cannot be associated with any existing clusters,” said FMM president Tan Sri Soh Thian Lai.
Health Director-General Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah was also most recently quoted during an engagement with the business community on July 4, 2021 that of the total cases, close to 70% were sporadic cases while 30% came from clusters of which 62% are workplace clusters.
Factories only account for 30% of these workplace clusters, and this works out to be around only 6% of the total number of cases that can be attributed to factories.
MOH further reported that only 15,069 (9.7%) out of a total of 156,105 infection cases from June 1 to 26, 2021 were attributed to the manufacturing sector.
Meanwhile, Dr Noor Hisham was also quoted saying on July 9 that only 16% of the recorded high of 9,180 cases reported that day were from clusters while the remaining 84% were based on testing of individuals.
“Based on FMM’s own analysis of the official data published by MOH on their social media platforms from July 1-12, 2021 the daily new cluster-based cases reported have ranged between 1% to 17% of the overall cases reported daily,” revealed Soh.
The graph below shows the trend of overall cases, new workplace clusters and new manufacturing cluster cases as reported by the National Crisis Preparedness and Response Centre (CPRC) of MOH on a daily basis. It is clear that cases linked to clusters especially manufacturing clusters are low.
According to Soh, other data has also supported the fact that factories are also not the main sources of infections.
Quoting from Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah again in the media on June 14, 2021 it was reported that out of the 662,457 cumulative COVID-19 positive cases since 2020, only 95,156 (14.4%) were from manufacturing.
On June 30, 2021 International Trade and Industry (MITI) minister Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali was quoted in the media saying that based on data obtained from the CPRC, the manufacturing sector accounted for just 9.3% of cases or 12,872 from the total 138,649 cases reported between June 1-23, 2021.
Based on the new cluster cases reported daily by the Ministry of Health from July 1 to July 9, 2021 and tracked by FMM, cases from manufacturing contributed a maximum of 7.3% only of the overall daily cases.
“While it must be acknowledged that the risk of factory infections cannot be totally eliminated especially now with the high percentage of sporadic cases and with the virus in the community, this most certainly cannot be equated with the lack of COVID-19 standard operating procedures (SOP) compliance by factories and is a very unfair conclusion to be made,” Soh insisted.
With the rise in the sporadic cases, managing the entry of infections into the factory or hostels has become more challenging for the industry despite the SOP and preventive measures in place including swab tests because the virus may still go into factories especially through the asymptomatic sporadic cases.
These sources of infections are often not traced back to the community where it most likely originated from but to the factory when one community-related infection amongst the workers leads to more workers getting tested due to close contact tracing done.
This in turn is reported as a workplace cluster by the authorities giving rise to the misconception that workplaces, especially factories, are the primary source of infection.
“Hence, it is important that the Government makes its lockdown decisions based on science and data, and not on misconception.
“Close only specific companies where cases of COVID-19 cases are detected but not declare enhanced movement control order (EMCO) on an entire area/district or state and impose strict operation conditions on all businesses.
“This is because it is unfair to unaffected companies especially those that have a clean record and have maintained the highest levels of SOP and workplace preventive measures,” Soh concluded. – July 14, 2021.
