Ministry of Health has released a new quarantine mandate in line with the declaration made by the World Health Organisation and the Centre of Disease Control US. Although health officials are continuously learning about Covid-19 and the many mutations of the virus, the development of vaccines and the vaccination rate has helped countries like ours to stem the pandemic from becoming even more alarming.
But the fact we have reached over 95% vaccination rate, does not mean we are out of the woods, the threat of Omicron looms over our head and all the hard-fought struggles for the past 2 years, numerous lockdowns, ramped up of vaccination, the freedom we are enjoying can all come to a halt if precautions are not taken.
With learnings gathered over the 48 months, we have come to understand the impact the virus exhibits on a human body, and at the same time, we have come to understand the symptoms and its infectivity rate. This knowledge will form the basis on how governments construct their policy for border openings and quarantine guidelines. While the policies will be dynamic and change anytime, Malaysia recently revised its quarantine mandate taking cue from global trends and ket scientific data.
With clearer communication and simple to understand table, MOH has released its quarantine procedure. Here’s the lowdown of the SOP.
For those who have received booster doses and show no symptoms (meaning those who have received the first two doses and had the third or fourth). If you show no symptoms you will have to be quarantined for 5 days and subjected to RTK-ag Self-Test on the last day, for those who have been vaccinated, partially or not vaccinated at all, the period will be for 7 days including the RTK-ag test on the final day.
Separately for symptomatic people, they will have to undergo RTK-ag test on day one under health officials’ supervision and could be sent to health facilities for quarantine. This will apply for both boosted, and for those vaccinated and non vaccinated, quarantine period remains the same as 5 and 7 days respectively.
All parties will only be released if test results are negative on day 5 and day 7 of the quarantine period. This SOP which begins from January 16 2021, applies to all Malaysian or travelers entering the country and those who are currently isolating and in quarantine. You can also get use the poster below for reference.
