He said the data available showed that schools were safe to attend and were not the cause of Covid-19 clusters as claimed by various quarters.

Radzi said attendance had been high at 90.26% between March 1 and April 23. Checks on the ground had shown that children were excited to be attending school again, and parents were also keen on having them back at school.

Although it might be easy to close schools at this moment, it might not be the right move, Radzi said. “It may be easy to take this route (closing schools). But let’s do the right thing. Would closing schools be the right decision (now)? We need to decide based on data and analysis,” he said.

Earlier today, 20 Penang schools were ordered to cancel classes in order to carry out sanitisation work. The order came in the wake of 79 schools in Selangor being told to close for two days because of Covid-19 cases.

Radzi said latest data from the health ministry showed that of the 99 education clusters, 52 involved public schools with 2,274 cases.

“This is 4.8% of the total number of clusters or 2.07% of cluster cases. Of these cases, 1.42% or 1,559 cases involved residential schools and only 0.53% or 585 cases involved non-boarding schools, not even 1%,” he said at a press conference here today.

The health ministry had said that 60.8% of Covid-19 cases in Malaysia were sporadic cases and 39.2% involved clusters.

“If we look at the sporadic cases, in this context, the kids are exposed to it (the virus) anywhere. But at school students are in a controlled environment because of the set procedures. We’re not saying we’re perfect, but we will do our best to keep infections to a minimum with the SOP,” he added.

The authorities would also step up compliance in hostels.

However, schools would be closed on the instruction of the National Security Council if the situation worsened.

Under the current rules, schools with positive cases would be closed for two days, and the district health office would make a risk assessment to decide if the closure needs to be extended, while conducting contact tracing and monitoring sanitisation and disinfection work.

Schools in red zones would not be closed except if they were under the enhanced movement control order, but state governments can discuss with the ministry if risk assessment required schools in certain localities to be temporarily shut.

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