THE areas of infection in Sarawak have shifted from the urban centres back to the villages and longhouses in the rural areas, said Dr Sim Kui Hian, a key advisor to the state disaster management committee.

In a posting in his Facebook account, he said the “moving back and fro” between the urban areas and the longhouses particularly in areas in central Sarawak, was due to the movement of people.

Two of the three new clusters the disaster committee reported yesterday – Kampung Hilir Beladin in the coastal town of Pusa and Penurin in Betong – are in the rural parts of the state.

Only the Jalan Limbang cluster in the town of Miri is in the urban.

Some 46 people in a village in Beladin were tested positive from the infection of a 67-year-old man during a religious ceremony.

In the first test using the RTK Antigen on April 30, he was positive and was referred to the Sarawak General Hospital in Kuching, 295km away, as Pusa has no medical facility to treat Covid-19 cases.

In the second test on May 2 using the RT PCR test, he was also positive.

The number of cases could rise as the result for 346 individuals have yet to be released.

Those who were infected have been sent to either the Betong Hospital or the Betong PKRC (Covid-19 Quarantine and Treatment Centre), some 60km away, for treatment and isolation.

In the Penurin cluster, 22 longhouse folks were found infected from the infection of a 49-year-old man who was tested positive during a pre-surgery screening in a hospital in Kuching.

Sim, who is also the state’s housing and local government minister, said a few longhouses have been reinfected more than once.

He added that around 20% of the cases are children under the age of 12 and most do not display any symptoms of the infection.

There were also six deaths, linked to the Covid-19, reported by the disaster committee yesterday to push the state’s death tally to 201.

Sim said the tally could have been close to 300 if 72 deaths – which were Covid-19 positive but classified by doctors and the Health Ministry to have died of other causes – were taken into account.

“(It’s tremendously) challenging for everyone all over the world on Covid-19. All of us are tired, exhausted, tremendous suffering, hardships, frustrated, mentally and emotionally stressed out…yet no magic solutions.”

The vaccines will not end Covid-19, he said, though those who are vaccinated will be less prone to infection, have “less severe symptoms, less chance of death”.

To those who have yet to be vaccinated, Sim has some good news.

He said more than one million doses of vaccines are expected in June and another one million in July. – May 8, 2021.