KUCHING: Sufficient supply of cost-effective Covid-19 vaccine is as important as arrangements for early vaccination programmes, said Parti Bumi Kenyalang (PBK) publicity secretary Arthur Wong.
“This should be the priority and not the proposed Sarawak-Kalimantan border wall which will take more than 10 years to build and it has nothing to do in containing the present pandemic,” he said today.
He said the border wall’s effectiveness to stop illegal entry to Sarawak is still in doubt.
“The recent upsurge of Covid-19 cases in Sarawak has caught Sarawakian off guard because all this while Sarawak was known as relatively clean with low positive cases and maybe because of the outstanding results, Sarawakian and the authorities were complacent in the fight against the disease,” he said.
Wong said with the recent Pasai Cluster and more Covid-19 clusters mushrooming up, the good image of the authority’s ability to contain the pandemic has been destroyed.
“Tracking information of positive cases supposed to be under home quarantine has also brought fear to the public and doubts on the effectiveness in administration and implementation of the standard operating procedures (SOPs),” he said.
He added that some supermarkets have also failed to restrict the number of customers to be inside the premises, thus, making physical distancing impossible.
“Therefore, supermarket operators must be informed to ensure physical distancing is strictly complied at all times,” he pointed out.
On another note, he said the MySejahtera app should be revamped to include Covid-19 test results as well as vaccination information for travellers and individual quarantine status so as to inform or alert outlets visited by disobedient Covid-19 positive or person-under-investigation (PUI) cases to stop them from entering the building or premises.
“It was reported that 10,000 or more Covid-19 test results could not be available promptly and have been overdue. Thus, the problem should be handled promptly to find out the cause of the bottleneck, be it insufficient Covid-19 test lab or reagents for the Covid-19 test,” said Wong.
