KUCHING: Sarawak recorded 11 new positive Covid-19 cases as well as a new cluster yesterday.
Of the new cases, seven were from Kuching, two from Samarahan, and one each from Bau and Lundu.
Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas said that one of the 11 cases was an imported case from overseas — a local who had just returned from the Netherlands.
“The case had returned to Sarawak on July 15 from Doha through the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) on a Qatar Airways flight. The case overnighted at KLIA, then took a flight to Kuching on July 17,” he said at the Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) Covid-19 daily update press conference yesterday.
On arrival in Kuching, the case was brought to a hotel quarantine centre to undergo the compulsory 14-day quarantine.
“Prior to this, the case was screened at KLIA via RTK Antigen and the result was negative on July 16. The case was swabbed for an rT-PCR (reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction) test on July 19 and found to be positive on July 20,” said Uggah.
He said that two of the reported cases involved construction sites. First was an Indonesian man who had just entered Sarawak legitimately to work at a construction site in Lundu.
He added that this case underwent screening at a health clinic on July 19 before entering the construction site and the rT-PCR swab test was positive yesterday.
“The second case is also an Indonesian man who works at a housing construction site in Samarahan. The case was detained by the Immigration Department of Malaysia during an operation to detect undocumented immigrants at construction sites,” said Uggah, who is also SDMC chairman.
He said that the case was detained by the Immigration Department as he did not have legitimate travel documents or a working permit. The case was directed to undergo a Covid-19 screening test on July 20 and the RTK Antigen test determined that he was Covid-19 positive.
Uggah said the two cases were related to contact tracing from existing clusters. One of the two was detected through screening and contact tracing within the Kuching Medical Centre Cluster and was a colleague of Case 582.
“The case is working as a medical laboratory technologist and this is the third case involving this cluster,” he said.
The second case from existing clusters was related to the Stutong Market Cluster; a trader at the market who underwent screening on July 19.
Uggah reported that one of the cases was detected through self-screening – an rT-PCR test done at a private hospital on July 20. He said that the case was a local man who had undergone a Covid-19 screening before travelling to Kuala Lumpur to accompany his child who needed medical treatment.
He said that five new cases were detected through contact tracing with a positive case; all five were colleagues of Case 602. These cases consisted of a man and four women aged between 27 and 43 years.
All 11 cases reported on Tuesday did not show any Covid-19 signs or symptoms. These new cases brought the total number of positive Covid-19 cases in Sarawak thus far to 619.
Uggah also announced that a new cluster, Sentosa Cluster, had been detected and this involved a health facility.
“From the initial screening conducted on 23 colleagues, four of them had positive Covid-19 rT-PCR test results.”
Uggah added all were close workplace contacts of Case 602, which was reported on July 19. These five new cases bring the total number of cases detected in this cluster to six. The source of infection is still being investigated and case tracing is still in active progress.
On the other active Covid-19 clusters, Uggah said one case each was added to the Kuching Medical Centre Cluster and Stutong Market Cluster, with each of these clusters’ tallies rising to three cases.
However, there were no additions to the other active clusters, with eight clusters in total still active.
“Today, Bau changes from green to yellow status after one locally-transmitted case was detected. With this, the total number of districts with yellow status in Sarawak is three, namely Kuching, Samarahan, and Bau, while there are 37 green districts,” he said.
Uggah said that two new cases had recovered and been discharged from hospitals – one each from Sibu Hospital and Bintulu Hospital, bringing the total number of recovered and discharged cases to 556, or 89.82 percent.
“Forty-five individuals are still receiving treatment at hospital isolation wards and the total number of deaths remains at 18, or 2.91 percent,” he said.
Uggah said that 14 new person under investigation (PUI) cases had been reported, and six were still awaiting laboratory results.
He said that 81 persons under surveillance (PUS) were checked into hotels on Tuesday to undergo quarantine, bringing the total number of PUS at nine hotels to 528, while 18,982 PUS had completed their quarantine period.
