KUCHING: The State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) has its own standard operating procedures (SOPs) to handle students returning from overseas or other Malaysian states to curb the spread of Covid-19.
“For those coming from overseas, some will be quarantined in Kuala Lumpur (KL) for 14 days,” said its chairman Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas at the Covid-19 daily update press conference at Wisma Bapa Malaysia here yesterday.
“Once their quarantine is completed and they come back to Sarawak, if they do not have evidence that they have been swabbed and tested negative for Covid-19, then we will take their swab sample,” he said.
He said that once the result of this swab test comes back negative, they would then be allowed to return home for home surveillance over the next seven days.
Meanwhile, he said that students who were coming directly into Sarawak from overseas or other states would be quarantined for 14 days at designated quarantine centres.
“If there is no certificate showing they have been swabbed in KL, we will carry out the swab tests and the process is the same,” he said.
He said those who had not been quarantined would be required to do so here for 14 days, and on the seventh day they would be swabbed and tested for Covid-19.
“If the results are negative then they can go home for home surveillance,” said Uggah.
Meanwhile, he said that students planning to return to Covid-19 green zones within Sarawak will be quarantined for 14 days at their point of arrival into the state.
“We must make sure that by the time we release them, they have tested negative for Covid-19,” he said, adding that this was especially important since they would be returning to Covid-19 green zones.
When asked if screening would be conducted on the over 130,000 foreign workers in the state, he said this would not be resorted to at the moment.
“We have asked the Labour Department and the Department of Occupational Safety and Health (Dosh) to observe them and we are monitoring the situation closely,” he said.
According to Uggah, there had been a directive from the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) for employers to get their foreign employees tested, but he said this may pose a problem in the state as there were not many private hospitals providing such facilities.
