KUCHING: Kuching is now a red zone again with 16 local transmissions among 21 new cases reported in the district on Tuesday (July 28), says Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah.
The Deputy Chief Minister said this brought the number of locally transmitted cases in Kuching to 53 in the last 14 days.
He said Serian and Lundu districts turned yellow after recording two and one new local transmissions respectively on Tuesday.
Red zones are districts with more than 40 local transmissions in the last 14 days, and yellow zones one to 40.
Uggah said Sarawak reported 25 new cases on Tuesday, taking the state's tally of confirmed cases to 675.
He said four were imported cases involving a foreign couple from Britain, a local student returning from South Korea and a Sarawakian man returning from South America.
Among the remaining cases, 15 were detected through contact tracing of active clusters.
"Nine cases come from contact tracing in the Sentosa cluster, four are contacts of a positive case in the Kuching engineering cluster and one case is a close contact in the Melbourne PUI cluster," Uggah said at the state disaster management committee's daily briefing here on Tuesday.
He also said a new cluster was identified, after four cases were detected through active screening of traders at the Satok market here.
"A total of 229 people were screened on July 25 and 26 and four found positive on July 17. All the cases are asymptomatic. The index case of the Satok market cluster is being investigated and contact tracing is ongoing," he said.
In view of the spike in cases, Uggah urged Sarawakians to keep observing the standard operating procedures (SOP), including social distancing and wearing face masks.
"Let us pray the situation doesn't get worse. And it will not get worse if all of us play our part.
"I notice there are people who find it difficult to keep social distancing, especially when eating in restaurants and also in some of the markets. There is a difficulty also in wearing face masks, which will be compulsory from Aug 1.
"So if all of us play our part, I'm sure the situation will get better as it did in the first phase," he said.
Uggah also reiterated that business opening hours in Kuching, Samarahan and Serian, which have been designated as Zone One in Sarawak will be reduced to 6am to 10pm effective Aug 1 to 14.
"It is indeed very sad that we have to yet again impose such a ban in Zone One. We understand that it will affect businesses but it is necessary for us to control the spread.
"The committee is working hard with relevant agencies and industry players to find a balance between the health of the rakyat and the economic health of our fellow Sarawakians," he said.
On the reduction of domestic flights to Sarawak from Aug 1 to 14, Uggah said this was done in view of the new SOP effective Aug 1 that all arrivals from the peninsula, Sabah and Labuan will be quarantined and swabbed on the second day.
"If we don't reduce the flights, we will not be able to cope with the volume of traffic," he said.
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