(July 7) BETONG: Sarawak’s Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) said today that it will meet in Kuching tomorrow to discuss plans for Sarawak’s transition to Phase Two of the National Recovery Plan (PPN). The conference will explore how Sarawak might be divided into zones for the plan’s next phase, according to Sarawak Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas, who is also the SDMC chairman.
After receiving a briefing on the status of development projects in his Bukit Saban constituency at the Spaoh sub-district office here, he told reporters, “Our preparations will also involve assessing the Covid-19 pandemic state in every area.”
Sarawak will employ three threshold value indicators, according to Uggah, to go from one phase to the next: the number of daily positive cases reported, the capacity of the intensive care unit (ICU) beds, and the proportion of the population vaccinated.
“We should be moving into Phase Two shortly if our daily data on positive cases continue to show a downward trend like they have in the last several days and today,” he said, referring to the daily new cases of Covid-19 in Sarawak.
In Sarawak, the number of daily new Covid-19 cases fell below 300 for two days in a row. 289 cases were reported today, compared to 286 cases the day before. The number of illnesses had decreased from the 544 reported on July 1.
The lower trend, according to Uggah, could be attributable to the adoption of the Movement Control Order, which limited people’s movement and activities, as well as the State’s aggressive immunization program.
“However, we can’t be certain because we haven’t finished vaccination our targeted 2.2 million people (in Sarawak),” he said.
He claimed that as of yesterday, 1,612,213 million persons in the state have been vaccinated, with 1,254,639 million (61.4%) receiving their first dosage and 357,574 (17.5%) receiving their second dose./n
