KUCHING: The Road Transport Department (JPJ) will open its counters starting today with only certain transactions allowed.
The Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) agreed with the instructions of JPJ headquarters released on April 27 regarding the opening of their counters.
“The operation times will be from 8am to 1pm. The permitted transactions will be according to JPJ’s guidelines,” said Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas at the Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) Covid-19 daily update press conference yesterday.
Meanwhile, on the State Health Department’s (JKNS) efforts in contacting the 2,484 individuals who were close contacts of positive Covid-19 patients but had yet to undergo health screenings, he said they called up 1,837 individuals as of yesterday — or about 73 percent of the identified close contacts.
“We are confident that those who can be contacted will be contacted within one or two days,” he said.
He said that about 209 of the individuals have addresses available but no telephone numbers, while 492 have no addresses or telephone numbers.
“From the 1,837, they successfully called 1,446 — about 78 percent of them — and 531 have gone for screening or have appointments to do so.
Uggah, who is also SDMC chairman, said that 742 contacts agreed to go for health screening at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) City Campus.
“With regard to the outcome so far, there have been four positive cases and 317 of them are still pending laboratory results,” he said.
Speaking of the active case detection programme which had just commenced, he said there were 50 teams going house to house.
“They have visited 670 houses as of 12pm and I am sure they will be visiting more over the next few days,” he said, adding that he would be visiting the operation room in Samarahan today.
He appealed to the public to cooperate throughout this operation, explaining that this was for the good of the public and their families to detect potential cases and get them tested as early as possible to prevent the virus from spreading.
