KUCHING: There is a need to have stricter enforcement of the movement control order (MCO) in Sibu town to curb the Covid-19 transmission.
KPJ Sibu Specialist Medical Centre orthopaedic surgeon Dr Wong Chya Wei said the situation in Sibu cannot be seen as just involving the Pasai Cluster alone, but it has to be assumed that the whole Sibu town is infected.
“It really looks like there’s no MCO with everyone out buying things for the coming Chinese New Year (CNY) celebration.
“MCO is important and effective to curb the spread of the virus. But the MCO 2.0 is not being enforced as effectively as MCO 1.0 here,” he said during a live session with doctors hosted by Sibu Municipal Council (SMC) chairman Clarence Ting on Facebook today.
He said Senator Robert Lau had brought up the issue of whether strict enforcement of the MCO needs to be done in Sibu.
“This means that there will be a curfew, but are we going to go down that road again? Because if we don’t, whatever we discussed here about containing the virus is not going to work for the people of Sibu. We have seen this (virus) all over the place,” he said.
Dr Wong further said that if a curfew or lockdown are done in Sibu just like in China, then maybe in two to three weeks time the Covid-19 situation can recede.
“But then it will kill the local economy. And I think Sibu folk are the type of people that will not allow that to happen.
“Therefore, we cannot use the same formula like what we did before. Because everyone, especially healthcare workers are ‘Covid tired’,” he said.
Thus, the matter needs to be looked at from a different perspective otherwise everything else is not going to work out.
Ting, on the sideline of the session, added that as CNY is just a few days away, the traditional way of celebrating the festivity must be curtailed this year.
“Otherwise, if we don’t, we will have another surge in Covid-19 cases following the CNY celebration,” he said.
In agreeing with Ting, Sarawak General Hospital (SGH) senior paediatric consultant and epidemiologist Dr Ooi Mong Hoi said CNY is always an important celebration in Sibu where everyone celebrates it in a big way. But this year, however, it needs to be scaled down.
“I agree with you that we have to skip this year’s celebration so that we can have the opportunity to celebrate many more CNY in future with our loved ones,” he stressed.
“… these are the many obstacles that everyone in Sarawak needs to go through before we can say that we are in a better place,” he said.
Dr Ooi said Sarawakians were able to maintain the standard operating procedures during the last few waves of Covid-19, but noted that it was not properly observed during Christmas last year which caused another outbreak.
“From now onwards, we have to really learn from what we have experienced during Christmas, and we really need to manage our CNY and other upcoming celebrations well. Only then we will know how things will pan out,” he said.
