Covid-19: Kuching a ‘red zone’ in Health Ministry graphics

KUCHING: The Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) has today maintained that Kuching District is still a yellow zone with 39 local transmitted cases within 14 days, just shy of the red zone figure of 41.

This is despite the Health Ministry labeling Kuching as a red zone in a graphic shared by Health Director-General Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah in a Facebook post earlier today.

SDMC’s update today was delayed – finally releasing its update at around 8pm via its WhatsApp group, about an hour after Dr Noor Hisham’s Facebook post.

In the graphics in Dr Noor Hisham’s Facebook post, Bau district is still classified as a green zone although SDMC maintained that it is still classified as a yellow zone, together with Kuching and Samarahan.

Today, SDMC reported eight new cases where four are from Kuching and four from Samarahan, bringing the cumulative number of positive cases in Sarawak to 649.

One of the cases is from a new ‘Construction Site Cluster’ in Kuching where a local underwent a Covid-19 screening on July 24 and tested positive for the virus the next day.

SDMC said five family members close contacts and 72 workplace close contacts have been screened, and all have tested negative so far for the virus.

The Health Department is still conducting contact tracing on the cluster.

Meanwhile, one more positive case was reported from the Engineering Cluster who was a close contact with Case #575. The local man underwent Covid-19 screening on July 14 but was found negative for the virus.

He underwent a second test on July 23 and was found to be positive for Covid-19 today. He was asymptomatic.

For the Sentosa Cluster, four more positive cases were detected where two of them are from the Kota Sentosa Hospital – one is a private company worker who works at that hospital, and one is a family member of Case #617 from the same cluster.

All of the new cases from this cluster were asymptomatic.

As for the other two cases, one involves a local man who just returned from Kuala Lumpur on July 14. He was randomly screened upon arrival and was found to be positive for Covid-19 on July 24. He was asymptomatic.

Another case was a close contact to Case #578, involving a local man who was tested positive for the virus after a second test on July 24.

To date, Sarawak has nine active clusters: th Engineering Cluster (4), Mambong Cluster (5), Medical Center CLuster (3), Jupiter Cluster (3), Stutong Market Cluster (7), Kuching Jetty Cluster (2), Sentosa Cluster (20), Melbourne PUI Cluster (2) and the latest Construction Site Cluster (2).

According to SDMC, Kuching recorded 51 active cases being treated in Sarawak General Hospital, one in Bau and 13 in Samarahan.

However, five cases have recovered from the virus and were discharged today, with a total of 561 recovered cases to date.

A total of 70 active cases are still being isolated and treated in hospitals so far.

The death tally in Sarawak remains unchanged at 18.

As for persons-under-investigation (PUI) cases, 18 new ones were recorded today with 13 still awaiting their lab test results.

SDMC also recorded 72 new persons-under-surveillance (PUS) cases today, making it a total of 570 PUS cases being quarantined in 11 hotels across the state.

-Theborneopost