New protocol to release Covid-19 patients sooner and 9 news from yesterday

KINI ROUNDUP | Here are key headlines you may have missed yesterday, in brief.

1. The Health Ministry will revise its treatment protocol to discharge Covid-19 patients after 14 days, even if they still test positive for the disease. This comes in response to new data showing these patients are no longer infectious at that point.

2. Among those who could soon be released under the new protocol is national athlete Jackie Wong, who has been hospitalised for Covid-19 for more than 70 days but still repeatedly tested positive for the disease.

3. The Bukit Jalil Immigration Detention Depot has emerged as Malaysia’s second-largest Covid-19 cluster, with 281 cases detected so far.

4. Effective today, the four-people-per-vehicle rule will be scrapped, and a vehicle will be allowed to carry as many people as its capacity would allow, as long as its occupants are members of the same household.

5. Malaysian Rubber Board chairperson Ahmad Nazlan Idris denied expediting the approval of the RM100 million Rubber Technology Centre (RTC) project at his parliamentary constituency in Jerantut, saying that the project is still being planned.

6. Accused of setting up a new Social Security Organisation (Socso) rehabilitation centre in his own constituency, former human resources minister M Kulasegaran said the project is actually located in a different constituency.

7. The Malaysian Trades Union Congress said the recent spate of outbreaks at cramped dormitories of migrant workers underscores the government’s failure to regulate living conditions there.

8. Residents at Taman Wadi Iman in Kok Lanas, Kelantan, spent their Hari Raya Aidilfitri holidays cleaning up after being hit with the sixth flash flood in a year. A faulty drainage system is to blame, they said.

9. PAS has urged for the production and sale of alcoholic beverages to be stopped until the problem of drunk driving has been resolved.

10. The World Health Organization has suspended testing the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a potential Covid-19 treatment pending a safety review, but Malaysia will continue to use it with close monitoring for side-effects.