Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the ministry had always adopted the targeted approach in its efforts against the pandemic.

Previously, the targeted or high-risk group were those from the Sri Petaling gathering – which remains the largest Covid-19 cluster to date – and those from the tahfiz school.

“Now, foreign workers are part of the targeted group, especially in the red zones in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor,” he said at his daily briefing here.

Noor Hisham was responding to concerns about Covid-19 infections among foreign workers.

It was recently reported that there was a spike in cases linked to construction workers in Ampang which led the government to decide on mandatory Covid-19 testing for foreign workers nationwide to prevent another cluster.

Noor Hisham said its policy now is to screen the foreign workers. He noted that of the 30 new Covid-19 cases recorded today, 24 involved foreign workers.

“We encourage employers to screen their workers.”

Meanwhile, Noor Hisham said that the ministry has received 50,000 rapid test kits from South Korea.

Sabah and Sarawak each received 10,000 kits while 15,000 kits were sent to Johor.

The remaining 15,000 were distributed to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) and klia2.

The ministry will receive another batch of 100,000 kits this week.

“We are now training (healthcare workers) to use the rapid test kit.”

Last month, the ministry said it would start using antigen rapid test kits from South Korea as these have proven to have high accuracy.

Noor Hisham had previously said the ministry hoped to order up to one million units of these rapid test kits.

These test kits will complement its reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests in use at the ministry’s 43 laboratories nationwide.

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