A red zone is classified as an area with more than 40 positive cases.

In a Facebook post, the department said the state recorded 52 new cases yesterday, 48 of which were from Taiping.

It said the 48 cases were all Malaysian detainees aged 35 to 65 who underwent close contact screenings on Oct 3 after travelling from Alor Setar prison on Sept 27 and 28. All had tested negative then.

“On Oct 10, there was a case that showed symptoms of a fever and the detainee received treatment at the detention centre’s clinic.

“On Oct 13, samples for a second reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test were taken. The results from the second test on Oct 14 came out positive.”

It added that all 48 cases had not left the detention centre in the last 14 days.

The remaining cases involved two Malaysians from Hilir Perak and another two in Hulu Perak who all came in contact with a positive case.

The department said it was conducting contact tracing and that all 52 cases have been isolated and admitted to hospital for further treatment.

Yesterday, health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah announced a new cluster in Perak, known as the Bah Pengkalan cluster.

The index case had a travel history to Sabah and five other cases were detected through close contact screenings.

A total of 330 people have been screened so far, with 47 testing negative and 277 awaiting test results.

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