BETONG, July 7 — The Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) will meet tomorrow to discuss the state’s preparations to transit into Phase Two of the National Recovery Plan (NRP), its chairman Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah said today.

He said the meeting will discuss if the state should be divided into different zones, and how this would be done.

"Our preparations will also be in assessing the Covid-19 pandemic conditions in every districts,” he told reporters after attending a briefing on the progress of the development projects in his Bukit Saban state constituency at the Spaoh sub-district office here.

The briefing was conducted by officers from Betong Division’s Public Works and Drainage and Irrigation Departments.

Uggah added the state would use the established NRP three threshold value indicators in moving from Phase One to Phase Two and the subsequent phases.

He said these will be based on the number of positive cases recorded, capacity of the intensive care units (ICU) beds and the percentage of the vaccination already given out.

"If our daily figures on positive cases continue to demonstrate the downward trends like in the past few days and today, we should be moving into the Phase Two soon,” he said.

On the downward trend, he said this could be due to the movement control order (MCO) which has put restrictions on the people’s movement while many social activities are not allowed to be held.

"So this is the purpose of the MCO to get people to stay home where they cannot mix or to travel around like interdistrict crossing, thus stopping the chain of transmission,” he added.

Uggah also said another reason and maybe to a certain extent for the drop may be due to the state’s very active vaccination programme.

"But we cannot really be sure as we have yet to complete vaccinating our targeted 2.2 million people,” he stressed.