KUCHING, July 13 — Sarawakians are still not allowed to do dine-in at eateries even as the state enters Phase 2 of the National Recovery Plan (NRP) tomorrow, the Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) announced today.
The committee made the decision after finding out that the Delta variant of Covid-19 cases has been on the rise in Sarawak.
“The state Ministry of Local Government and Housing will (however) review and improve the guidelines (standard operating procedures) for dine-in at dining premises in Phase 2 of the NRP soon,”
“Therefore, dine-in is temporarily not allowed until the latest guidelines are issued by the ministry,” SDMC said in a statement today.
The decision was made by SDMC after performing a risk assessment with the National Security Council and taking into account the threshold indicators for the state to transition into the next phases of NRP.
SDMC yesterday have announced that Sarawak will enter Phase 2 of the NRP tomorrow (July 14).
It was said that under Phase 2, there will be more relaxed movement control restrictions including dine-ins which would be allowed.
Apart from allowing dine-ins, Phase 2 of Sarawak’s NRP should also permit workplace capacity in the private sector to increase from 30 per cent to 50 per cent while there will no longer be any curfew nor restrictions on public gathering.
“More economic sectors will be opened up under Phase 2 with strict compliance of the guidelines swept by the Ministry of Local Government and Housing,”
“These sectors include premises offering furniture, electrical appliances, kitchen wares and household items, car wash services, car accessories, fashion and accessories as well as hair salons, cyber cafe outlets, night and weekend market, mobile phone and accessories outlets,” said SDMC yesterday.
Following the discovery of the Delta variant of Covid-19 virus in the state, SDMC would however have to fine-tune their guidelines for Phase 2 first.
The first Covid-19 case involving the Delta variant in Sarawak has been detected, according to the Institute of Health and Community Medicine (IHCM) of Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas).
According to IHCM in a statement Thursday (June 18), the variant was detected following its genome sequencing analysis recently.
“A 56-year-old man has been detected with the variant on June 18 and his case is classified as Import B case,” it said.
IHCM said besides the Delta variant, positive cases involving the Beta and Theta variants had also been detected in Sarawak before this. — Borneo Post Online
