By Nancy Nais and Lian Cheng
ASAJAYA, March 10: Health personnel visited the elderly and children at home during the first day of the Covid-19 active case detection (ACD) operation at Kg Asajaya Tengah, Kg Asajaya Ulu and Kg Asajya Laut, today.
The operation, which started as early as 8.30am this morning and will continue until March 12 was announced by the Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) after six positive cases were detected in the district.
Earlier this morning, many villagers turned up for swab tests at makeshift centres set up in the three villages.
By noon, the crowd thinned out, perhaps due to the hot weather.
At 1.30pm, a team of health personnel from Kg Asajaya Laut decided to go house-to-house to swab villagers.
“There are an estimated 659 houses in the three villages, with some 4,426 in population. Today’s ACD covered about 200 houses. We will continue tomorrow and day after,” Samarahan District Health Epidemiological Officer Dr Robert Wong disclosed to DayakDaily.
Wong added that the ACD exercise was specially organised to help the public in areas of high exposure to Covid-19 cases and this is one of the strategies to ‘detect and isolate’ to control the spread of the infection.
He also urged villagers to come forward to be risk-assessed and tested for Covid-19.
Meanwhile, Asajaya assembly Datuk Abdul Karim Rahman Hamzah called on residents of the three villages to participate in the ACD.
Abdul Karim said ACD is the way to cut the transmission of the coronavirus in the area.
“I am happy that SDMC, the Health Department and other relevant agencies have acted fast on the Asajaya cases and quickly imposed ACD on three villages.
“I m very sure we can stop the spread of the virus by swabbing every folk in the three villages.
“My advise to all Asajaya folks is to always adhere to the SOPs (standard operating procedures) set by SDMC as well as the Health Department. This way we can stop the virus in its tracks,” Abdul Karim told DayakDaily today.
Yesterday, SDMC reported 12 Covid-19 positive cases in Kuching Division and out of the 12, six were detected in Asajaya district.
Out of the six cases in Asajaya district, one case was detected due to symptoms displayed while three were detected through ACD, and two cases were found to be linked to the Emperoh Jambu cluster. — DayakDaily
