By Ling Hui
KUCHING, May 8: The management of shopping centres who are listed under the Hotspots Identification for Dynamic Engagement (Hide) are advised to consider the reimplementation of crowd control like last year.
This is the view of State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) advisor Dato Sri Dr Sim Kui Hian when he said three out of four shopping malls listed today are in the Kuching Division.
“The four shopping centres include Vivacity Megamall, Plaza Merdeka, Summer Mall and The Spring in Bintulu. So, everyone please be more careful.
“The management of these shopping malls may need to consider crowd control like last year where a maximum number of patrons let into the malls at one time is fixed,” he said.
He added that this Hide system introduced by the federal government is similar yet different from the Covid-19 exposure lists released by SDMC daily.
Dr Sim, who is also Minister for Local Government and Housing, said the exposure lists are derived from past Covid-19 infections while the Hide system serves as a prediction of potential clusters.
“The ones the Sarawak government has been releasing every day relates to something that has already happened while Hide is a prediction tool to identify potential clusters in a period of seven days.
“Most of the places would be shopping malls because shopping malls have the most crowds and among the crowds, the MySejahtera application could detect close contacts through check-ins,” he explained.
Meanwhile, he also said the National Security Council (MKN) had meetings from yesterday (May 7) until today, so there could be a series of new policies to be announced in the coming days in implementing stricter standard operating procedures (SOPs).
Whether Sarawak would follow suit these new policies, he asserted that the Sarawak government would decide after monitoring the situation in the State.
“If we were to follow them blindly, there would not be any mandatory quarantine for those arriving in Sarawak now.
“I remember there was one day where Sarawak reported 17 positive cases who just returned from Peninsular Malaysia and they were asymptomatic.
“Without the quarantine order, they would be allowed to roam around Sarawak and Sarawak now would most probably have over hundreds of symptomatic Covid-19 cases,” he said in a Facebook live session by the Kuching South City Council (MBKS) mayor Dato Wee Hong Seng earlier today.
Sibu Municipal Council (SMC) chairman Clarence Ting was also one of the invited guests in the live session today. — DayakDaily
