SARAWAK has ordered all its students who have not been screened for Covid-19 but have returned to their respective homes across the state to undergo screening immediately.

They are to report themselves to the Resident’s Office in the division of their residence for the screening.

The directive comes after a 20-year-old female student of Kolej I-System in Kuching infected two college friends with the contagious virus before returning to her home in the coastal village of Tg Manis in central Sarawak.

Her two friends – one in Kuching and the other in Samarahan – were among three positive cases detected in the state in the last 24 hours.

The third case was detected in Bintawa, Kuching.

Deputy Chief Minister Douglas Uggah said these students needed to take a new test following detection of the Kolej I-System student’s infection.

“We need to determine their health status so we can act quickly if they are found positive,” Uggah, who also heads the state Disaster Management Committee, said in a news briefing today.

Uggah said when the Tg Manis woman tested positive, health authorities immediately started tracing people whom she may have been in contact with over the last two weeks.

He said their investigation showed she had travelled to Samarahan to visit her friends before returning home.

Uggah said 25 of her close contacts have been identified and all were screened.

So far, 11 showed no signs of infection while the remaining 14 are awaiting test results.

Uggah said he hoped the transmission of the virus from Kuching to Samarahan by the student should act as a lesson for people in the state on the dangers of inter-district travel.

“I hope the people will now understand the restrictions on movement from one district to another.”

The three positive cases today raised the number of Covid-19 infected people in the state to 552.

Seventeen people have died from the viral infection. The latest death, that of a 72-year-old Kuching man, was on April 30.

Meanwhile, Uggah said Sibu has been declared a green zone but Samarahan, with its one positive case today, dropped from the green zone into the yellow zone.

A district is declared a green zone if it has no active positive cases, yellow if it has between one and 40 cases and a red zone is above 41 cases. – May 27, 2020.