MIRI: Minister in charge of Miri Division Disaster Management Committee (MDDMC) Datuk Lee Kim Shin on Sunday (May 16) revealed that many large Miri Covid-19 clusters originated from social events and institution settings where groups of people gathered and removed their masks for some reasons.
“Some, despite being symptomatic, still attended the gatherings,” he said.
Lee hoped that there would be no more such gatherings with the stricter conditional movement control order (CMCO) imposed recently.
“We are seeking health and medical experts’ advices,” he said.
Lee said implementing the MCO (for example, closing down all non-essential services) might hurt businesses unnecessarily at this point when there was no evidence that the spread of Covid-19 originated from workplaces.
“If there is strict standard operating procedures (SOPs) compliance, we could perhaps see a reduction in the number of positive cases. However, If the situation worsens, MDDMC will have to propose to SDMC to impose MCO, similar to the first MCO introduced on March 18, 2020.
“In fact, our present CMCO was already as strict as Semenanjung’s present MCO,” he explained.
The State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) imposed the tightened SOPs for Miri five days ago.
Lee said MDDMC was monitoring the situation very closely and reporting it daily to SDMC. What was imperative now was to ensure strict compliance of the SOPs by everyone.
