KUCHING, July 24 — The Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) today said inter-district travel is strongly discouraged for members of the public in light of the spike in the number of Covid-19 cases in Kuching and Samarahan districts over the past week.

Its chairman Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah said exceptions will be given for specific cases.

"These include doing official duties for essential services, deaths of family members, and going for a medical check-up,” he told reporters during his media briefing.

He said the decision to strongly discourage inter-district travel was discussed at length by the SDMC during its meeting this morning.

"It is not just between Kuching and Samarahan, but the advisory is also for other districts categorised as green zones,” he said, adding that for now, SDMC has yet to decide to re-impose an inter-district travel ban as what was done during the movement control order (MCO) in March.

Uggah, who is also the deputy chief minister, also said that the new intake for pre-university programmes at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) has been put on hold until further notice.

He said SDMC and Unimas discussed the matter before deciding to postpone the intake.

Unimas is located in the Samarahan district.

Uggah said the Kuching district is still categorised as a yellow zone, although the number of Covid-19 cases stands at 52, breaching the 40-case mark which would have plunged Kuching district into the red zone.

"However, 38 of them are local transmissions while the rest are imported cases,” he said.