KUCHING: The State Health Department has identified two new clusters in Saratok and Kapit districts.
Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) in a statement today named the cluster in Saratok as Jalan Roban Lama Cluster whilst the one in Kapit was named Jalan Selirik Cluster.
“The Jalan Roban Lama cluster is a cluster involving an educational institution that involved a form six college. This cluster was detected through a targeted screening conducted by the Betong Divisional Health Office on Apr 18 on the staff and students at the college,” it said,
It added that a total of 40 students were found to be reactive Rapid Test Kits (RTK) Antigen. Hence, repeated screening using rT-PCR tests were done and 13 of them were tested positive on Apr 22.
“It is believed that the cause of infection of this cluster is from the spread through a close contact among the college staff and students.
“A total of 294 people were screened, with 48 of them detected positive including the index, 241 negative and another five still awaiting test results,” it said.
All the positive cases were referred to Saratok Hospital and admitted to Quarantine and Low-Risk Treatment Centre (PKRC) Betong for isolation and further treatment.
The Jalan Selirik cluster in Kapit involved a secondary school where a 15-year-old boarding student was detected through symptomatic individual screening on Apr 12.
“The case has been in the school dormitory since the start of school session on Apr 4 and began to show Covid-19 symptoms on Apr 5.
“The spread of the virus occurs through gotong-royong activities that were carried out on Apr 4 in school dormitories as well as lack of social distancing among the students and the school staff,” it added.
The spread has infected the staff and students at the school through close contact.
“Through active case detection screening on the students and staff of the school, an additional 22 positive cases were detected.
“The positive cases consist of school staff, cooks, dormitory students as well as students who lived off dormitories,” it explained.
A total of 108 people involving this cluster were screened where 23 cases were detected positive including the index, and 85 people are still awaiting their results.
“All 23 positive cases were referred to Kapit Hospital and admitted to PKRC Kapit for isolation and further treatment.
“With the addition of today’s clusters, currently, the state has 56 active clusters where 17 of them had recorded 189 new positive cases,” it said.
Meanwhile, SDMC revealed that Kabong district had changed its status to yellow after recording a total of 23 local transmission cases in the past two weeks.
Sarawak now has 21 districts in red zone, six orange-status districts,10 with yellow zone status and only three districts remaining green zones.
