WITH Chap Goh Meh, the last day of Chinese New Year, tomorrow, a key adviser on the management of the Covid-19 pandemic to the Sarawak government fears there could be a surge of new cases in the state after tomorrow.

“Chap Goh Meh will be another hot bed event for Covid-19 transmission,” state Housing and Local Government Minister Dr Sim Hui Kian, wrote on his Facebook.

He said that contact tracing in the past two weeks had indicated that social gatherings at bistros, food and beverage outlets and private residence in conjunction with the Chinese New Year celebration was “an important contributing factor for a large surge of cases in Kuching-Samarahan areas”.

Even though he did not mention it, Sim was alluding to the new Jalan Muhibbah cluster in the rural town of Betong where a private pre-new year gathering had infected more than 23 people, including the 55-year-old index case, as of yesterday. 

Some 209 people who were at the gathering or have come into contact with them after the gathering have been screened for the virus.

Sixty-six have been found to be negative but another 120 are still awaiting their test results.

Sim, an adviser in the state disaster management committee, said “positive cases have been repeatedly found in socio-cultural events associated with large gatherings”, which puts everyone in the community at risk.

He also dismissed the notion by some that only people who were unwell should be worried about Covid-19.

Sim added that many people have also simply ruled out the possibility of getting Covid-19 as they remain well despite having been identified as a close contact to a positive case. 

“Covid-19 could have been spread far and wide in our community by a seemingly well person. Besides that, many cases generated through such individuals would have seemed to have come from an unknown source,” he said. 

The implication, he said, was that those infected would expose family members and friends who are at risk of developing even severe symptoms. 

“We have seen some who had already recovered from these symptoms by the time they were tracked down by contact tracers. They only admitted to have had such symptoms after they were traced through a positive case friend or relative. 

“Indeed these individuals were the most likely source of infection of their positive case friend (and) family member,” he said. 

“This is why we need everyone to do it together, each one of us to be the police and wake up to the facts that no one is immune to Covid-19.”

He said Sarawakians could expect this trend of infection to continue “till most of us are vaccinated”. 

Sarawak’s mass vaccination drive begins tomorrow. – February 25, 2021.