Two customers of fashion stores in Phnom Penh have tested positive for Covid-19, the Health Ministry said on Tuesday, bringing the total of patients in the “November 28” cluster to 34.
Three days after reopening, Phnom Penh’s Aeon Mall temporarily shuttered some shops at the Health Ministry’s request amid widening concerns over a local cluster of Covid-19 cases.
The Health Ministry said Saturday that the local source of the “November 28” Covid-19 cluster could be the daughter of the country’s prisons director, saying she showed relevant symptoms in October.
Suspected contacts were being tested for Covid-19 Friday evening at Phnom Penh fashion store Pedro after health authorities announced six new cases linked to the Sihanouk Blvd. location.
Four new Covid-19 cases in the local “November 28” cluster were announced Friday, with the Health Ministry saying that according to its analysis the cluster is unrelated to the visit of Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto last month.
Phnom Penh’s 32-story Canadia Tower office building was closed for the day on Thursday after an employee at a bank in the building tested positive for Covid-19, with hundreds of people who worked on the same floor kept inside for testing.
Hundreds of people are being tested and quarantined in provinces across the country even for having had indirect contact with the country’s prisons director more than two weeks before he tested positive for Covid-19.
UPDATED 6:50 p.m. — Pasteur Institute is running nearly 2,500 tests a day — “close to their limit” — while tests for airplane passengers have moved to the National Institute of Public Health. Pasteur is pooling samples, among other strategies, to accelerate testing volumes, the U.S. CDC says.
No prisoners have been tested for Covid-19 despite contact with an infected department director, even as more than 250 prison officers at the same Phnom Penh facilities have received tests due to the risk of contagion, officials said.
The defense minister, finance minister and National Assembly president are set to join the interior minister, justice minister and minister of the cabinet in going into self-quarantine following new fears of Covid-19 contagion at a full parliamentary session last week.
VOD is an independent media outlet producing radio programs and disseminating information to the public via the Internet.
© 2019 VOD. All Rights Reserved.
