KUCHING: The State Health Department has declared a new cluster dubbed the Jepak Cluster in Bintulu.
Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) said this is a community cluster involving Covid-19 infections among residents from around Kampung Jepak in Bintulu District who had attended a wedding thanksgiving ceremony organised at the village on Apr 3.
“The index case of this cluster is Case 18,498, a local woman from the village who was screened through symptomatic individual screening at the Bintulu Health Clinic.
“She was found to be positive for Covid-19 through a reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rT-PCR) test on Apr 7,” they said in a statement today (Apr 14).
The index case was also the organiser of the ceremony.
“The index case possibly got infected from the community and results of the investigation found an estimated 70 persons had attended the ceremony,” said SDMC.
As a result of further investigation and screening on family members as well as close and casual contacts of the index case and those who attended the ceremony, another 41 positive cases were detected.
The committee said a total of 102 individuals had been screened in this cluster, whereby 42 were positive including the index case, 36 tested negative for the first screening, and 24 still awaiting test results.
“All positive cases involving this cluster have been referred to Bintulu Hospital and have been admitted to the Low-Risk Treatment Centre (PKRC) in Bintulu for isolation and further treatment.”
With this, SDMC said there were 49 active clusters in the state, of which 16 recorded a total of 182 new cases today.
