ALL 200 or so traders at the Stutong wet market on the outskirts of Kuching will have to undergo Covid-19 tests after two more of them were tested positive for the virus.

The two, in the now named Stutong market cluster, were among seven positive cases detected in the state – Kuching (6) and Bintulu (1) – today.

Deputy Chief Minister Douglas Uggah, in his daily Covid-19 update, said the two were among 56 traders whom the Health Department had picked for random testing in the initial screening.

The market, in the sprawling Tabuan Jaya residential area, is a focus of the Health Department’s contract tracing efforts and testing as it was frequented by the 72 year-old man who died of the infection on July 10.

Uggah, who chairs the state disaster management committee, said the two victims were asymptomatic as they showed no signs of the infection.

“The source of their infection could be local as they have no history of travelling abroad,” he said.

Health authorities detected another infected person in the Mambong cluster, raising the number in the cluster to five, and another one in the medical cluster.

Uggah said the latest person tested positive in the Mambong cluster is a woman “that has close contacts with a positive person from that cluster”.

He said she was tested positive in the ongoing screening conducted on “close contacts and family members” of positive persons in the cluster.

He said she, too, was asymptomatic.

The latest person detected in the medical cluster is an “elderly” Sri Aman woman residing in Kuching.

Uggah said she was tested positive yesterday prior to her bronchoscopy examination at the Bau hospital.

The other case of local transmission was that of a female foreigner who had gone to a government clinic in Batu Kawa to be tested prior to her returning to her country.

Uggah said the rT-PCR test on her yesterday found her to be positive.

“This case is considered a local transmission as she has no history of travelling abroad since 2019,” Uggah said.

Two of today’s seven cases were categorised as imported cases.

The first was a person who had returned from a trip to Singapore on July 12.

The victim from Bintulu was taken to a quarantine hotel in Kuching on arrival at the Kuching international airport where he spent the night while in transit.

On the second day of his return, the test for the infection showed he was positive.

The second victim returned from a trip to Indonesia on July 6.

Uggah said the first test on the second day of his 14-day quarantine was negative.

But the second test on the 10th day of his quarantine yesterday, however, returned a positive result. – July 18, 2020.