THE wedding reception of a Kuching couple last month will long be remembered by their families and friends – but for the wrong reasons.
Unknown to them, a guest at the March 7 event, held at one of the Sarawak capital’s leading hotels, was infected with Covid-19. He died 10 days later.
“Are we infected?” was the question that immediately came to mind for the other attendees after they found out.
At the time, though, the victim had no idea he was infected, though a day prior, he was already “vomiting, shivering (and had) diarrhoea”, said his widow.
Earlier on the day of the reception, he had gone to see a general practitioner, and was prescribed medication for diarrhoea.
That guest was David Cheng, a 60-year-old pastor with the Emmanuel Baptist Church in Kuching’s Taman Hui Sing residential area, whose death on March 17 made him the first person in the state to die of the coronavirus, which has spread across the world.
As his health continued to deteriorate after the reception, he was warded at Sarawak General Hospital on March 14.
The condition of the pastor, whom the Health Ministry said had “a history of chronic medical problems”, continued to decline until his death in the intensive care unit.
A press statement from the Sarawak Disaster Management Committee confirming Cheng’s death said 193 people who had close contact with him have been identified and ordered to undergo quarantine at home.
The ministry has identified the wedding reception and a church gathering, both of which the pastor had attended, as the second-biggest coronavirus cluster in Malaysia after a tabligh event at Sri Petaling Mosque in Kuala Lumpur in late February.
Cheng’s widow, Sim Lee Naa, said it is unlikely that he had infected all those who attended the wedding reception, or people who went to church meetings after that.
The couple arrived late to the reception, which was a sit-down dinner, and found seats at the back of the banquet hall.
“We were seated at the back of the hall. We went in late, and went home earlier,” said Sim, who is disputing the official account that Cheng – officially listed by the ministry as “case 358” – is the index case in the so-called “Good News Fellowship cluster”.
She said the most her husband could have infected at the reception were “six to eight” people whom they shared a table with.
The only link Cheng had with Good News Fellowship was that he was among the 100-odd people who attended a three-day seminar, from February 26 to 28, organised by the church, she said.
Sim said to her knowledge, only she and her daughter contracted the virus from him.
She said those who had contact with Cheng before and after March 6, 7 and 8 tested negative in screenings conducted on March 15 and 16.
“Sadly, we still hear of pastor Cheng being linked to all the new cases at Good News Fellowship.”
Cheng was also the focus of attention as he had come into contact with Bandar Kuching MP Kelvin Yii at a school reunion in mid-February, the wife of a Damansara Utama Methodist Church pastor, and a Good News Fellowship member, all of whom have tested positive for the virus.
Sim said because her husband was the first to succumb to the disease in Sarawak, “the spotlight was on him”.
She added that since only the three of them – Cheng, herself and their daughter – from the Emmanuel Baptist Church tested positive, if he had been the source of infection since late February, “all Emmanuel Baptist Church members would have tested positive, too”.
“With all the wrong reports and misinformation, and much fake news from the media, it is like rubbing salt into our wounded hearts in our time of grief.
“The last week of his life, when he was contagious, he was resting at home or making trips to the doctors.
“That’s why only his wife and daughter got infected.”
As of yesterday, Malaysia has registered 73 coronavirus fatalities.
THE MALAYSIAN INSIGHT
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