PUTRAJAYA: The Health Ministry has identified three large Covid-19 clusters in Sarawak involving close contacts of Persons Under Investigation (PUI) who returned home from Italy, a Church gathering and healthcare frontliners.
Health Director General Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said there was a total of 18 new coronavirus cases recorded today from these three clusters.
The breakdown sees one infection being traced from the Italian PUI, seven from the church gathering and 10 involving medical staff, with a total of eight fatalities, he said.
He adds that the ministry is still studying the best course of action to break the chain of infections involving the three clusters.
In the meantime, Dr Noor Hisham said they will continue to increase the close contact testing, as he feels that there could be other people who had come in close contact with the Covid-19 patients in the three clusters but have yet to be identified.
“We are still identifying the best way to break the chain of infections (with cases related to the three clusters) but what is for sure is we need to increase actions for active case detection so we can find more close contacts,” he said.
Using the PUI Italy cluster as example, Dr Noor Hisham said on top of the close contacts listed at the PUI’s workplace, which is a bank, there might be other more unrecorded contacts.
The PUI Italy cluster involved a total of 60 Covid-19 infection with five deaths and 10 recoveries.