KOTA KINABALU, Aug 19 — Sabah reported its third consecutive all-time high of daily Covid-19 cases today.
Sabah Covid-19 spokesman Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun announced that there were 2,582 new cases as of today, up from yesterday’s 2,413.
The day before, it recorded 2,103 cases. The state has breached the 2,000-case mark only four times, but all were in this month.
“The number of cases will remain high for a while as we are still clearing the backlog of samples we received.
“These backlogs are the positive results that were recorded after five days of the screening results,” he said.
Eleven per cent or 289 cases from the daily total today are from these backlogs, mostly from the state capital, Penampang and Putatan.
Most of the cases are concentrated in the state capital (475 cases), followed by 302 in Penampang, 140 in Tawau and 170 in Sandakan.
Close contact screening contributed to 58.2 per cent of the total number of cases, and 37 cases are from detainees.
Masidi said the state’s medical facilities were doing their best to handle the cases and thankfully 97 per cent were in category 1 and showing no symptoms or mild symptoms, with few requiring hospitalisation.
“It’s still manageable,” he said.
The state acknowledged its increasing number of cases and said it would adopt a strategy of expediting its vaccination programme to cover as many people as possible.
“Yesterday, the health department achieved a vaccination record of 62,365 doses in one day. With this, 25.8 per cent of the adult population has been fully vaccinated while another 48.4 per cent has received one dose,” he said.
