There were three new cases involving two clusters detected in Sarawak today, said Health director-general, Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

He said from the church gathering cluster in Kuching, there was one new case making the total number of positive COVID-19 cases in the cluster to 176.

Dr Noor Hisham said from the total, 86 patients were discharged after making full recovery, 85 are still being treated in normal ward in the hospital while two cases are in intensive care unit (ICU) and there were three deaths (cases no. 358, 2471 and 2864).

“There were two new cases from the Sarawak General Hospital (HUS) cluster involving its health personnel, bringing the total positive COVID-19 cases in the cluster to 56 with 35 having fully recovered while 21 patients are still being treated at the hospital,” he said.

Speaking at the daily COVID-19 media conference at the Ministry of Health today, Dr Noor Hisham said most of the cases from HUS cluster were closely linked to the church gathering cluster, in 29 cases or 51.8 per cent.

For the Italy Person Under Investigations (PUI) cluster, he said there were no new cases reported today and the total number of positive cases in the cluster stayed at 63.

“From the total in the cluster, 26 cases had fully recovered, 31 were being treated at normal ward in the hospital; one critical case is in intensive care unit (ICU) and there were five deaths (cases no. 1031, 1032, 1006, 2850 and 2210).

On the HUS cluster, Dr Noor Hisham said based on investigations, there were no cases resulting from handling positive cases at COVID-19 ward and the intensive care unit (ICU) of the hospital.

He said so far, there were 2,003 close contacts identified from active case detection and 1,950 health workers were found negative.

He said tight preventive measures taken included the decontamination of related areas and active mobilisation of personnel from the hospital and nearby health clinics, while patients with weak immune system were transferred to nearby facilities and random screening was conducted at all high risk locations in the hospital.

-- BERNAMA