Cambodia’s Covid-19 infection count has risen to 51, with four new cases announced by the Health Ministry late on Friday.
The new positive cases include three Cambodian men, one who has been quarantined in Phnom Penh’s Chak Angre Health Center after having had direct contact with someone who recently attended a Muslim religious gathering in Malaysia that has been linked to hundreds of infections across Southeast Asia.
The other two Cambodians attended the same gathering in Kuala Lumpur and are now quarantined in Battambang Provincial Hospital. A fourth man from Malaysia also tested positive in Kampong Cham province, the twelfth Malaysian national to test positive for the respiratory disease in Cambodia this week.
As of Friday night, 31 Cambodians and 20 foreign nationals have tested positive for the virus, with 43 new cases confirmed since Sunday.
At least 28 people who have tested positive had attended the Islamic missionary movement Tablighi Jama’at’s gathering in Kuala Lumpur, which was held over several days at the end of February and early this month and attended by some 16,000 people, including 1,500 foreigners.
Globally, the novel coronavirus has infected more than 244,000 people, with 86,000 recovered, and been linked to more than 10,000 deaths, according to data from the U.S., E.U., China and World Health Organization (WHO) compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
