SIBU: Dr Wong Chya Wei from KPJ Sibu Specialist Medical Centre said effective and strict enforcement is needed to bring the Covid-19 cases in Sibu down.
During a Facebook live discussion with Sibu Municipal Council (SMC) chairman Clarence Ting yesterday, Dr Wong said effective and strict enforcement was needed in making sure everyone followed the standard operating procedure (SOP).
He lamented that despite Movement Control Order (MCO) being enforced in Sibu, the movement of people here looks like there is no MCO at all.
“The MCO is not being enforced as effectively as the first MCO. Do we need strict MCO in Sibu like a curfew?
“If we are going to have a curfew, we can do like what China did by stopping people from coming out and only allow one person in a car to buy groceries.
“If we do that, maybe in two weeks, the Covid-19 cases can go down,” he said.
However, strict enforcement would kill the economy, he added.
“People are ‘Covid tired’, not just the public, but the health workers as well. We have to look from different perspective and use different formula. Otherwise, whatever effort is being used will not work,” he said.
He thus said strict enforcement was important to ensure that everyone could follow the SOP.
Meanwhile, Senator Robert Lau said the way to bring down the cases was to follow strictly the SOP by wearing face mask, personal hygiene and practise physical distancing.
Using fire as an analogy and Covid-19 as an invisible fire, he said the best way to fight the fire is to prevent the fire from happening or spreading.
“The second is to identify where the fire is. The invisible fire can be detected by testing. The sooner the test is done to identify where the fire is, the better.
“Those tested positive will then be isolated,” he said.
On tracing and testing, he said Sibu Hospital had the capacity to test 500 samples every day.
The hospital also outsourced about 800 samples daily to Kuching and Kuala Lumpur. Thus, there is a delay of two days to a week for the test result to come.
“Delay contributes to the virus spread as the carriers continue to move around,” he said.
Dr Peter Tang from Rejang Medical Centre said the prolonged MCO would affect a lot of people.
Thus, he believed education on Covid-19 and ways to stop the spread was important.
“We know that by wearing face mask, the chance of transmission is low and if you use face shield, the chance of transmission is much lower,” he said.
Meanwhile, SMC chairman Clarence Ting said the ‘usual’ Chinese New Year (CNY) celebration must be curtailed this year to keep the (Covid-19) figures down.
“Otherwise, we will have another surge following CNY,” he said.
Sarawak General Hospital (SGH) senior consultant paediatrician Dr Ooi Mong How also said that if everyone were discipline enough to observe the SOP, Covid-19 could be controlled in the next two weeks.
He also agreed that everyone was tired of Covid-19 but carelessness and complacency were a good recipe for another outbreak.
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