KUCHING: Sarawak now has a new Covid-19 cluster identified as Bah Arnab Cluster following four positive cases reported in the state involving members of a family.
Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) chairman Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas said the case index for the cluster was case 719 which was reported last Tuesday.
“The case had a travel history of a round trip to Sabah. A total of 16 close contacts to the case were screened and three of them were found to be positive for the virus today.
“These cases are cases 729, 730 and 731 who are living in the same house to case 719,” Uggah said at a press conference on Covid-19 update here.
He also mentioned that the other contacts whose test results came back negative for the first screening would still need to undergo second screening test on the 10th day.
Uggah stressed that the cluster was under control as it only involved immediate family members.
“However, further investigations and detection of other contacts to this cluster are being actively carried out by the state Health Department to avoid more serious spread,” he added.
At the same time, Uggah mentioned that Kuching and Bintulu districts have changed its zone statuses from green to yellow after reporting three and one new positive cases, respectively.
Meanwhile, Sibu and Lawas districts remained as yellow zones with three and two local infections, respectively.
This takes the total number of districts with yellow status to four while the other 36 districts in Sarawak remained in green status.
Additionally, Uggah clarified that there was an information error on case 722 whereby after further investigation, it was found that the case was not given home-quarantine instruction but instead, was only given advice to do self-quarantine until his test result comes back negative.
“The case was randomly screened upon arrival at Kuching International Airport (KIA) on Oct 3 in which at the time, SDMC had not implemented mandatory screening and home-quarantine instruction for visitors coming or returning from Peninsular Malaysia. The instruction only started on Oct 4,” he explained.
He also said that the police would enhance the enforcement of stay-at-home order effective immediately in order to ensure that those who were supposed to do so would comply with the law.
He also advised those who felt that their house was not appropriate for the stay-at-home order could request to be quarantined in designated centres.
