Students told to stay at quarantine centres if homes do not meet criteria

By Olivia Miwil - May 7, 2020 @ 12:21pm

(Filepic) Sabah has fine tuned its procedure on managing the return of students from outside the state. — NSTP/Mohd Rafi Mamat

KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah government has fine tuned its procedure on managing the return of students from outside the state.

State Education and Innovation Minister Datuk Dr Yusof Yacob said those with symptoms and returning from overseas are required to be quarantined at the quarantine centres for two weeks.

"For students whose homes do not meet the quarantine criteria, they have to stay at the quarantine centres.

"These are houses which have no rooms with a private toilet or there are too many residents in it, or they are living with senior citizens," he said in a statement.

For others, they may undergo home quarantine after having their samples tested prior to returning to Sabah or upon arrival at the Kota Kinabalu International Airport.

Sabah is expecting a mass movement of about 14,000 students returning to their hometowns.

As of yesterday, the Higher Education Ministry has updated that there are 9,655 students from peninsular Malaysia and 1,998 from Sarawak expected to return to the state.

Meanwhile, students that will go out from Sabah totalled 3,375 people.

At the same time, in preparing its students to return home with minimal infection, Universiti Malaysia Sabah has prepared a sanitising tunnel to disinfect the students' belongings.

The university's development and maintenance department director Professor Dr Mohamad Ibrahim Mohamad said the closed concept of the tunnel emits mist for 30 seconds to all luggages.