H1N1 in Wangsa Maju


MP Wee Choo Keong's blog reports of a case of H1N1 in Wangsa Maju here. Thanks for the alert, EW.

Please refer the WHO's guidance documents on H1N1 here. If you read the WHO site carefully, it states here that entry and exit screening at airports, etc is not a entirely effective method of containing the disease. This is due to the nature of the disease which is airborne-spread. I agree with this, after being back from two airports last night. Thermal screening helps, but one or two infected fellows may escape being scanned especially when you have dozen of fellows barging into the immigration corridor.

Here's something to share on the effectiveness of airport thermal screening. A week before the H1N1 outbreak, at a foreign country, I walked through a thermal scan undetected despite having viral fever. My fever right at that particular moment had subsided but went back up again during my stay in that country.

Despite all this, the WHO is not recommending travel restrictions either- stating that such restrictions has little or no impact on the spread of such flu-like diseases. I personally stress the importance of not undermining the use of face-masks when one is an enclosed crowded area for a long duration of time and washing your hands on a more than regular basis especially after having shook hands. Also, companies is Malaysia which have presence in multinational environments have begun implementing measures to curb the spread of H1N1 and minimize losses. Such measures include health screening at company entrance for employees who are back from abroad, splitting operations and management into several teams for business continuity and so on.

At the point of posting this article, I still can't find any mainstream online news on this Wangsa Maju H1N1 case- I think news like this gets lost in the tons of political news that we get.

Update: The Malay Mail gets on ground zero with the report here.

4 comments:

  1. Just got back from Singapore and page 3 of Chinese paper Oriental Daily reported the Wangsa Maju case plus 3 more cases in Cheras and Sarawak...

    another reason to maintain vernacular education? :-)

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  2. A reader highlighted it was reported in The Star 1-2 days back, but I scoured through the hardcopies and could not find the report. I believe the Wangsa Maju case will be out in the mainstream papers within a week.

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  3. Guyz,

    There's a brief mentioned in the Star today on the Wangsa Maju H1N1 case but other locations include Seri Chempaka I'ntl, SRJK Jln Davidson, Assunta Primary and SMK Damansara Utama.

    In other words, it's happening all over KL/Selangor!

    Does NTR have to 'sneeze' before political news gets trumped by health concerns?

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  4. Shar, I think if it's Ebola virus or anything deadly and airborne we would be dead. Communication holiday from the Ministry.

    The situation has gotten controllable alright. We hope this dies down like what happened to SARs otherwise there will be economy impact when the next wave comes around.

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