MIRI: The Miri Division Disaster Management Committee (DDMC) would like to clarify a recent newspaper report stating that the city had 13 new Person Under Investigation (PUI) cases in a day.
According to a statement issued by the committee, PUI refers to patients presented with respiratory symptoms plus history of travelling overseas or outside Sarawak (imported cases) or attending gatherings or events.
However, there were previous records of Covid-19 cases in Sarawak being detected with no history of travelling overseas.
“Therefore as a monitoring strategy in Miri Division, anyone who was presented with respiratory infection and pneumonia (all termed collectively as Severe Acute Respiratory Infection / SARI) to hospital will be notified as PUI and swab for PCR Covid test will be done for them despite being without history of travel to overseas.
“This is a form of enhanced continuous surveillance being done at Miri Division ever since the division was declared as green zone,” the statement read.
As such, referring to the 13 PUI cases reported on July 15, eight cases were negative. The remaining five results are still pending.
“This initiative is considered being vigilant and performing cautionary testing among those with moderate to severe respiratory symptoms to ‘actively’ rule out being a Covid-19 infection,” it further stated.
