AUTHORITIES in Sarawak have extended the four-day partial lockdown of the two residential estates in the red zone of Samarahan by another three days, according to Deputy Chief Minister Douglas Uggah, with the lockdown supposed to end today.

He said “active case detection” for infected persons at the epicenters of the Covid-19 pandemic in the district has so far only managed to test 20% of since door-to door testing began on Monday.

Active screening, which Uggah described as somewhere “between the movement control order and the enhanced MCO”, was imposed on the residential estates of Taman Desa Ilmu and Uni Garden.

The state disaster management committee, which Uggah chairs, selected the two areas to identify positive cases, and people in close and casual contact with infected persons, because 20 people from these areas have tested positive and two more have died in 14 days.

In his daily briefing on the pandemic in the state today, Uggah said 2,288 houses have been visited by the 50 contact tracing teams over the past two days.

However, he said 820 houses were locked up with no one at home. It is estimated there are 5,300 houses in the two residential estates.

A total of 221 people have been asked to go for a screening with 124 reporting to the screening centre that had been set up in the respective estates, Uggah added.

Ninety-seven close contacts have also been identified.

“If we have not carried out active screening, we would not have known of these 97 people,” Uggah said.

The committee has also decided against the practice of sending test samples collected in the two housing estates to the National Public Health Laboratory in Selangor due to the anticipated delay in receiving results, given current transport restrictions.

Currently, two flights a week are scheduled between East Malaysia and the peninsular.

Uggah said all the testing would now be carried in the two labs in Kuching, which could produce results in 24 hours.

The labs are at Sarawak General Hospital and University Malaysia Sarawak. – April 30, 2020.