Covid-19: No new positive cases recorded in Sarawak for sixth consecutive day
KUCHING: No new positive Covid-19 cases were recorded in Sarawak for the sixth consecutive day yesterday, says Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah.
The Sarawak Disaster Management Commi ee (SDMC) chairman said two cases have recovered and were discharged yesterday, one each from Sarawak General Hospital (SGH) and Sibu Hospital.
“The total number of recoveries as of today (yesterday) are 437 cases or 80.33 per cent of the 544 total positive cases in Sarawak,” he said at a press conference on Covid-19.
The state also recorded 90 active cases as of yesterday, with one being treated in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
SDMC also recorded 31 new PUI cases yesterday, with 26 cases still waiting for lab test results.
Meanwhile, State Health director Dr Chin Zin Hing said as of yesterday, the department has taken samples from 33,530 individuals and a total of 45,378 swabs to be tested with PCR testing.
“The reason why there are more swabs than individuals is because for some individuals, we took more than one swab each,” he said.
So far, he said the positive rates of all the individuals tested were at 1.62 per cent, which is in line and well within the range of the national rate of 1.53 per cent.
He said according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the ideal positive rate is to have a positive rate of less than 10 per cent and Sarawak has been doing ample testing.
“These testings are ongoing and we are now focusing on students returning to the state,” he added.
Dr Chin also said Sarawak has tested 11.2 individuals per 1,000 population, which is comparable to the national testing rate of 13.8 per 1,000 for PCR testing.
“In short, we are actually testing quite adequately in Sarawak because we have to make sure that if any case is detected, we could deal with it immediately,” he said. On another update, Uggah said Sarawak had 97 quarantine centres all over the state, where 60 were for persons-under-investigation (PUI), while 37 were for persons-under-surveillance (PUS). Uggah said the PUI quarantine centres had the capacity of 5,673 beds, with 4,291 people being quarantined there at the moment. While for the PUS, 5,378 hotel rooms had been provided by 41 hotels all over Sarawak, with 4,036 being quarantined there at the moment after SDMC had recorded 510 more new PUS cases, he said. On another note, Dr Chin also updated on the condition of Sarikei MP Andrew Wong, who tested positive for Covid-19 on March 13. “He is still in the hospital. “He’s stable and alert but still needs to undergo rehabilitation at the hospital,” he said.