A health worker administers a dose of the Covid-19 vaccine at the Longi industrial vaccination centre in Kuching. — File photo
KUCHING (Aug 22): Ninety-nine per cent of the Covid-19 cases in Sarawak will recover thanks to the state’s high vaccination rate, said State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) advisor Dato Sri Dr Sim Kui Hian.
The Local Government and Housing Minister said despite the high transmission of Delta variant, 99.9 per cent of the infections in Sarawak fell under Category 1 and 2, meaning no symptoms or mild symptoms respectively.
“Although 99 per cent of these positive cases will recover due to high vaccination, the (remaining) sheer number may potentially still pose a challenge to hospitals and intensive care unit (ICU) beds for Category 3 to 5 (lung infections, lung infections requiring oxygen, and lung infections requiring ventilator),” he said in a Facebook post last night.
Given this, Dr Sim said Sarawak still needs to be on high alert, with Sarawakians supporting each other and not to be panic or resorting to politicking or spreading fake news.
He said yesterday marked another day of Sarawak recording four-digit cases after the first Delta case was detected in the state mid-June.
Sarawak first breached the 1,000-mark on Aug 12 with 1,216 cases and further breached the 2,000-mark on Friday (Aug 20) with 2,548 cases, the highest daily infections, thus far.
The days that Sarawak also reported four-digit cases were Aug 16 (1,566), Aug 18 (1,403), Aug 19 (1,206) and yesterday (1,964).
Of the 1,964 cases yesterday, Dr Sim said 697 cases came from the Kuching district alone.
He said 427 cases reported in Kuching were detected through close contact tracing in 222 locations.
“While 211 cases were linked to family clusters, 73 other cases were connected to social clusters and 68 others to workplace clusters.
“It is also noted that 37 cases were sporadic; and 68 cases of the total infections in Kuching were symptomatic during testing,” he added.
In Samarahan, Dr Sim said 117 cases of the total 227 infections there were detected through close contact tracing in 38 locations.
He added that 109 of the total 227 cases were linked to active case detection (ACD).
According to him, 31 cases of the total 147 cases reported in Serian were symptomatic during testing.
“While 27 cases were involved in ACD, 108 others were detected through close contact tracing in 54 locations,” he said.