By Ling Hui
KUCHING, Jan 4: The newly declared Stutong Cluster in Kuching yesterday (Jan 3) has nothing to do with the Stutong Community Market.
State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) advisor Dr Sim Kui Hian cautioned the public not to be confused as the Stutong Cluster got its name because Stutong Heights is the place of abode of the cluster’s index case (Case 1,119).
“As mysterious as before by the naming of Sarawak Health Department, it was understood that the Stutong Cluster is related to the place of living of the index case at Stutong Heights.
“This is not to be confused with the Stutong Market,” Dr Sim said in a post uploaded on Facebook yesterday.
Dr Sim also revealed more details about the two new cases related to the cluster in SDMC’s report yesterday.
He said Case 1,131 was with Cases 1,118 and 1,119 at K11 karaoke on Dec 27 while Case 1,132 met with the index case in the office on Dec 24.
Two of the cases were swabbed at a government health clinic on Jan 2 and their results returned positive on the same day.
Seeing that the index case is an insurance agent and her movements were fairly extensive, he urged members of the public to help with SDMC’s close contact tracing work by stepping forward to be swabbed.
“As this cluster is highly mobile with extensive network of job and social contacts, being highly infectious due to low CT (Cycle Threshold) values, we will need more people who are exposed to come forward to be rT-PCR (rapid test polymerase chain reaction) tested.
“Unfortunately, only 10 walked in for free rT-PCR testing at PetraJaya today (Jan 3),” said Dr Sim, who is also the Minister for Local Government and Housing. — DayakDaily
