27 March, 2020
On 16 March 2020, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, announced the imposition of a 14-day Movement Control Order (“MCO”) from 18 March to 31 March 2020 (“Announcement”) nationwide to curb the spread of the COVID-19 infection in Malaysia pursuant to the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act 1988 and the Police Act 1987. Subsequently, the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases (Measures within the Infected Local Areas) Regulations 2020 [link] (“Regulations”) was published to give effect to the Announcement. On 25 March 2020, the MCO was extended for a further 14 days, thereby pushing the end of the quarantine period until 14 April 2020.
This is Malaysia’s response to a steep spike in COVID-19 cases, bringing Malaysia’s total of confirmed cases to 1796 as at 25 March 2020. The imposition of the MCO is to ultimately help isolate and identify carriers of COVID-19 and to minimise the spread of the disease.
To know about the Regulations and MCO in detail, kindly refer to our recent articles – Movement Control Order in Malaysia – Immediate Implications [link] and Updates on Movement Control Order – Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases (Measures within the Infected Local Areas) Regulations 2020 [link] comes into effect. We have also published a regional article entitled ASEAN’s Response to COVID-19: Employment Issues to Consider [link].
The full article can be found from Zicolaw's site here.
For more information, please contact:
Jeyakuhan S K Jeyasingam, Partner, ZICO IP
jeyakuhan.jeyasingam@zicolaw.com
