SIBU district slipped back into the Covid-19 yellow zone after a local transmission was detected in the central Sarawak town today.

The positive case was a local expatriate worker who was tested positive during the mandatory pre-travel test. He was about to return to work in Papua New Guinea.

The victim, who showed no symptoms of the infection, took the Covid-19 test yesterday and the result showed he had contracted the virus.

The state disaster management committee categorised him as a local transmission as he had never travelled to any high risk infected areas since his return home in January.

The state’s other yellow zone district is Serian, about 65km from Kuching. Six out of Sarawak’s nine cases detected today were in Sibu.

Four of them were Indonesian women who failed the pre-employment screening they took on December 6 at a private medical centre.

The first test showed they were negative but the second taken on Tuesday came back positive.

The town’s sixth case was a man from Johor who tested positive after taking the test at the Sibu airport on December 6.

The disaster committee said the man displayed some of the symptoms associated with the virus. He has now been warded in an isolation ward of the Sibu hospital.

Elsewhere, two cases were detected in Kuching and one in Sri Aman districts.

One of the cases in Kuching and the one in Sri Aman involved Indonesian nationals in Immigration Department detention centres.

They were tested after they were arrested for entering the state illegally. Both did not have valid travel documents. – December 17, 2020.