KUALA LUMPUR: The government has decided to place Keningau district, Sabah under the  Movement Control Order (MCO) from tomorrow until April 4, said Senior Minister (Security Cluster) Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob.

He said the MCO was to facilitate and enable the Ministry of Health (MOH) to conduct targeted screenings, detect several other close contacts and control residents’ movement in the district.

"The MOH has confirmed that there has been a surge in daily positive cases in this district with 42 cases recorded as a result of targeted screening in Kampung Lingkudau which has also been placed under Enhanced MCO (EMCO).

"After carrying out a risk assessment with various agencies in the MCO Technical Committee and on the advice of the MOH, the government has agreed to implement the MCO in this district," he said in a statement on the implementation of the Conditional MCO and Recovery MCO today.

Ismail Sabri added that the EMCO in Kampung Tanah Merah, Kota Marudu, Sabah would end tomorrow as scheduled.

This was decided after the various agencies in the MCO Technical Committee took into account the risk assessment, decline in number of positive cases in the locality and that the clusters were under control.

"To date, the MOH has conducted 65 screenings and of that number, 26 positive cases have been recorded," he said.

On compliance with the MCO standard operation procedures (SOPs) Ismail Sabri said 100 individuals were arrested yesterday for violating the SOPs with 97 of them being compounded and three others remanded.

Not observing physical distancing recorded the highest number of offences involving 48 individuals, followed by failure to provide equipment to record customers’ details (27), entertainment centre activities (12), failure to wear face mask (11) and  interstate or interdistrict travel without permission (two).

He said 13 illegal immigrants were detained, seven vehicles were seized while 39 boats were detected in national waters during Ops Benteng yesterday

-- BERNAMA