See tells Sarawak gov’t to step up Covid-19 testing to curb new infections

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See Chee How said said if testing were only limited to patients exhibiting a range of symptoms, an abrupt spike particularly due to the Delta variant may cause a surge in hospital admissions and possibly fatalities.

SIBU (Sept 9): Batu Lintang assemblyman See Chee How has called on the Sarawak government to step up its Covid-19 testing and tracing to help curb the spread of the pandemic.

In a statement today, he said if testing were only limited to patients exhibiting a range of symptoms, an abrupt spike particularly due to the Delta variant may cause a surge in hospital admissions and possibly fatalities.

He said low testing would also result in the constrain in responses which would hinder proper planning.

“On the other hand, sufficient testing will put us in a better position, a better understanding of the situation, having in hand greater and suitable details as to what is going on and what we can do to make decision and plan our action,” he said in a statement today.

See also said the people need information and details to overcome the challenge and ‘get on top of the pandemic’, and told the state government not be too distressed with the high figures of daily positive cases, if these figures reflect ‘the real and actual situation’.

He said the state government must be wiser with the past experience, as most nation states in the world had to resort to very harsh and draconic actions, including ‘lock-down’ to address the spread of the virus.

“Further, testing of the patients allows and enables contact-tracing to help curb the spreading of the virus. Besides tracking the prevalence of the virus in a community, it will enable us to act rapidly and decisively if the virus mutates and another variant emerges,” he said.

See believed that testing and tracing of positive cases must continue, and the reporting of the number of cases is crucial to reflect public accountability and a constant reminder to the populace not to lower their guard in the effort to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.

“In fact, the high positivity rate have shown that we have not conduct sufficient test. We need to increase our testing capacity to understand and know what we can do, moving forward,” he said.

See said while the state government had accused the other states for deliberately doing less tests to bring down the daily positive figures, it should remind itself to do what is right, for the interests of Sarawak and the health and safety of all Sarawakians.

Although the federal government may have set its mind to attune, revise or pattern the Covid-19 as an endemic and declared that the people could live with the virus, he said there was no need for Sarawak to follow their decision because the state government has the autonomy in public health matters.

“With the prevalent positive cases involving the Delta variant, Sarawakians are at more severe health risk as compared to others,” See said.

He also said that many were skeptical whether the figures released reflect the true situation in Selangor.

In Code Blue, an online portal advocating and promoting health care as human rights, See said may people were questioning the soaring fatalities in Selangor over the last two weeks.

He said although daily Covid-19 infections dropped 55 per cent in Selangor – from nearly 7,500 cases on Aug 10 to fewer than 3,400 cases on Sept 7, yet fatalities increased 68 per cent which was from 65 deaths on Aug 24 to 109 deaths on September 7.

“What is the reason for the surging fatality rates, inconsistent with the falling daily infection and positive rate? We simply cannot take testing and tracing lightly,” he said.