KUCHING: The State Health Department (JKNS) has declared a new cluster in Bintulu District called the Jalan Sultan Iskandar Cluster.
Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) chairman Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas said this is a workplace cluster involving Covid-19 infections among civil servants of a government department at Jalan Sultan Iskandar in Bintulu.
“The index case of the cluster is Case 18,172, a local man who was screened through symptomatic individual screening at Bintulu Health Clinic on Apr 5.
“He was confirmed to be infected with Covid-19 through a reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test on Apr 6,” he said at the Covid-19 update press conference today (Apr 15).
He said the index case, who carried out many field works around the areas of Bintulu city and Sebauh District likely got infected from the community while on duty.
He said further investigation and screenings on the case’s family members, colleagues, and casual contacts had resulted in an additional 25 cases testing positive for Covid-19.
“A total of 440 individuals have been screened involving this cluster, where 26 cases tested positive including the index case, 358 tested negative after the first screening, and 56 are still awaiting test results,” said Uggah.
He added all positive cases involving this cluster had been referred to Bintulu Hospital and admitted to the Low-Risk Treatment Centre (PKRC) in Bintulu for the purpose of isolation and further treatment.
Meanwhile, JKNS declared an end to the Bukit Tunggal Cluster in Julau after no new cases were reported over the past 28 days.
With this, the number of active clusters remaining in the state is 49, of which nine recorded a cumulative number of 123 additional new cases.
On the status of districts in the state, Uggah said Bukit Mabong District had changed status from yellow to orange after recording 26 local infection cases in the last 14 days.
“This increases the number of orange-status districts to five and reduces the number of yellow-status districts to 16,” he said, adding that there were 15 red districts and four green districts in Sarawak.
