KUCHING, April 16 — DAP’s Bandar Kuching MP Kelvin Yii today urged the Ministry of Health (MoH) and Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) to be more transparent with the Covid-19 pandemic situation in the state to allay the public’s concern.
He said they must properly explain the reason behind the decision made by Putrajaya and SDMC with regards to the implementation of the movement control order (MCO) in severely Covid-19 hit cities in Sarawak.
“With the significant increase of cases in Sarawak the past few weeks, and rumours of an implementation of MCO in several parts of Sarawak, it is understandable that the people are anxious and want proper explanation with regards to the real situation,” Yii said in a statement.
He said the government must be transparent with the public and give proper assurance to them.
“First and foremost, SDMC must be transparent with our current data and positive rate on district and sub-district levels to determine if we are testing enough to properly determine the proper disease burden of the area.
“Currently, the daily focus has primarily been on the total number of new daily Covid-19 cases,” he said, adding that while the number is important, there is also a need to know the total number of tests that are being done on a daily basis.
He said based on limited data available to the public, it was stated that on April 15, about 639,767 were tested in Sarawak which will result in a positive rate of about 8.11 per cent which is much higher than the recommended five per cent by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
“This basically means that even with our high numbers in Sarawak, we are actually not testing enough,” he said.
Yii said many medical experts have advocated in outbreak areas, Rapid Testing Kit (RTK) Antigen which has shorter turn-around times and reduced costs should be used.
“We need to test as many as we can, get results quick, isolate them quickly and treat them if needed,” he added.
