Giving all of our support to Sibu folks to stop spread of Covid-19

Our State Government is serious in giving all the support to our folks in Sibu and to meet the urgent treatment needs for Covid-19 patients there. Our Right Honourable Chief Minister, Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Tun Abang Haji Openg had announced recently that our state gov­ern­ment will pro­vide 10 ad­di­tional ven­ti­la­tors to Sibu Hos­pi­tal very soon to meet the demand for such equipment.

Cur­rently, there are only 3 ven­ti­la­tors avail­able and ad­di­tional ma­chines are now needed to meet the in­creas­ing num­ber of pos­i­tive cases in Sibu re­cently. Apart from that, Abang Jo said the state gov­ern­ment would add more quar­an­tine cen­tres there and the Sibu Di­vi­sion Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Com­mit­tee is also iden­ti­fy­ing such fa­cil­i­ties.

Such moves are aimed to im­prove the State government's ef­forts in curb­ing the spread of Covid-19, in­clud­ing in the as­pects of pro­vid­ing fa­cil­i­ties, quar­an­tine cen­tres and lo­gis­tics because according to the chief min­is­ter, the next 5 or 6 months period is crit­i­cal in bat­tling the pan­demic.

Abang Jo added the vac­cine is not a cure, it is just a preven­tion, to en­hance our an­ti­body to combat the virus. Thus, we still need to con­tain Covid19 cases within that time in Sarawak and in view of that, our Chief Minister had re­quested the dis­as­ter man­age­ment com­mit­tee in the var­i­ous di­vi­sions to find ways to im­prove the lo­gis­ti­cal con­nec­tion be­tween the quar­an­tine cen­tres and af­fected ar­eas with the state gov­ern­ment would bear the costs to be incurred.

It is challenging when there are Covid-19 pos­i­tive cases in the long­houses because the patients must be brought out to be quar­an­tined but is a big state and therefore the local authorities are fac­ing lo­gis­tic prob­lema. Nev­er­the­less, the Chief Minister had pointed out that we do not want these pa­tients to stay at the long­house be­cause it is very dan­ger­ous as it will in­fect the rest of the long­house folks there

Our State gov­ern­ment is also look­ing into com­bin­ing man­power among po­lice, mil­i­tary, Askar Wata­niah (Ter­ri­to­rial Army) and Rela to meet the short­age of manpower to enforce the movement restrictions in the affected areas. He had also em­pha­sised on the im­por­tance for our folks to giv­e their full co­op­er­a­tion and com­pli­ance with SOPs in order to curb the spread of Covid-19.