KUCHING, Sept 14: Some residents are allegedly upset and took to social media to condemn the frontliners following the extension of 14-day lockdown at Taman Bandar Jaya, Bintulu.
In response to the residents’ frustration, Bintulu MP Datuk Seri Tiong King Sing apologised for the inconvenience caused but he stressed that it was important to prevent more people from getting infected with Covid-19.
He explained that the Health Department had expedited sample testing to deal with the larger load due to the increasing cases, including processing test samples from other districts in addition to Bintulu’s cases.
“Even then, there are too many samples to be processed, not to mention the short circuit incident happened a few days ago, leading to the delay (in processing the test samples) from Taman Bandar Jaya.
“We all hope that residents can understand the severity of the situation and refrain from repeatedly challenging the lockdown measures,” said Tiong in a statement yesterday.
He acknowledged that once the lockdown extension was announced, it was immediately met with condemnation and grief on social media and WhatsApp.
“Most comments were unnecessarily hurtful and unfair to the frontline personnel who were trying their best to do the job. We all have the same goal, to preserve the lives of the residents there,” said Tiong.
The Prime Minister’s Special Envoy to China said he will further discuss with the Bintulu Health Department to arrange for patients who were confirmed positive in the second round of testing to be isolated along with their close contacts based on analysis of the actual situation so that the authorities can unblock the areas as soon as possible.
He mentioned that the second round of tests in Taman Bandar Jaya is still in progress with three more individuals confirmed positive for Covid-19.
“The Health Department will identify further on the identity of the three patients, including whether they are from the same household or from different families.
“From this, we can assess whether it is appropriate to adopt a narrower isolation as a way to lockdown the housing area,” he added.
He also said there is a possibility that the Health Department would consider lifting the lockdown earlier after completing the tests just like in the case of another locality, Taman Jason, where lockdown was extended.
Tiong further said that newly confirmed cases in Bintulu Division amounted to 454 cases on Sept 12 and 449 yesterday (Sept 13) while Bintulu District has accounted for 435 cases and 382 cases for the same period.
Of the cases, first round of mass testing at Jade Garden and Joy Park yielded 16 cases and two cases in Joy Park, while nearly all of the MV Petra Galaxy vessel crew members were tested positive.
He also reported that there were 130 under 18 years infected in Bintulu, most of them under the age of 10 with a one-year-old being the youngest.
In fact, he warned that just recently, several confirmed cases involved those who had been vaccinated suffered deterioration to move from Category 1 to finally, Category 5 and passed away. — DayakDaily
