KUCHING, July 21: Sarawak reported 11 new Covid-19 cases today, taking the state’s tally of confirmed cases to 619.
State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) chairman Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah said Kuching recorded seven cases, followed by two in Samarahan, and one each from Bau and Lundu.
“One of the case was a Sarawakian who’ve just returned from the Netherlands. The case returned to Malaysia on July 15, from Doha through Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) by Qatar Airways. The case then stayed at KLIA and subsequently took a flight to Kuching on July 17.
“The case does not show any signs or symptoms of Covid-19. Upon arrival into Kuching, the case was brought to the quarantine center for the mandatory 14-day quarantine,” Uggah said at a press conference here today.
He added that the case was screened at KLIA using RTK Antigen and the result was negative on July 16. On July 19, the patient underwent a rT-PCR swab test and the result returned positive for Covid-19 on July 20.
Uggah, who is also the Deputy Chief Minister said there were two positive cases involving construction sites.
An Indonesian citizen who recently entered Sarawak with legal documents to work at a construction site in Lundu had underwent screening at a health clinic on July 19 before he entered the site.
On July 21, his rT-PCR test returned found positive.
“The second case involving a construction site at Samarahan is an illegal immigrant from Indonesia.
“The case has been detained by the Immigration Department during one of its operations to detect illegal immigrants (PATI) at construction sites. He was arrested and detained for being unable to produce any valid travel document nor work permit. An RTK Antigen screening test on July 20 returned positive for Covid-19,” Uggah said, adding that both cases did not show any signs or symptoms of the disease.
Two cases were also reported from the existing health and Stutong market clusters.
“The one involving the health cluster was detected through close contact detection. This case is working as a medical laboratory technician and is the third case under this cluster.
“The Stutong Market cluster reported one of its traders as positive for Covid-19 following a screening test on July 19,” Uggah said.
One case was also detected when a Sarawakian went for rT-PCR self-screening at a private hospital on July 20. The case had underwent Covid-19 screening before travelling to Kuala Lumpur to accompany their child for medical treatment.
Meanwhile, five new cases were reported through contact tracing from their colleague who was detected as positive earlier.
“All these five cases are colleagues to case number 602. They consist of one male and four females, aged between 27 and 43. All of them do not show any signs and symptoms,” Uggah added. — DayakDaily
