KOTA KINABALU, April 17 — Two new cases of Covid-19 here have put the state capital in the red zone with 42 cases.
Kota Kinabalu joins Tawau, with 79 cases, as the two red zones in the state. Lahad Datu, with 39 cases, is close to being designated a red zone.
Districts with 41 cases and above are classified as red zones while districts with between 21 and 40 cases are classified as orange zones.
As of yesterday, there are 288 reported Covid-19 positive cases in Sabah with four deaths, and 135 recovered and discharged.
State health director Datuk Dr Christina Rundi said that, aside from the two new cases in Kota Kinabalu, a third was detected in Keningau, bringing the number of cases there to 12.
Meanwhile, 739 people are currently being quarantined at 25 designated centres all over the state, after 77 people were discharged yesterday.
Rundi said that the state Health Department has been looking into the number of Covid-19 cases among health workers in the state and has identified two clusters — neither source of infection was from treating Covid-19 patients.
“We have been investigating the incidence for about two weeks now. There are two identified clusters — one involving staff of the Sabah Womens and Childrens Hospital in Likas, Kota Kinabalu and Keningau hospital.
“The former has contributed to the increase of cases in the state capital. Of the 42 cases in Kota Kinabalu, 24 were from the tabligh cluster while 11 are among the Health Department. Of the 11, eight are from the hospital,” she said.
However, the health workers were infected from outside the hospital and have infected several of their co-workers. Dr Rundi said no cross-contamination could be detected as the staff wore personal protective equipment (PPE) throughout their course of their duties.
“There’s a bigger chance that the infection occurred outside of wards because some of the colleagues were also housemates,” she said.
Dr Rundi said the authorities have taken drastic measures including screening all healthcare workers involved in the hospitals, including their family and social contacts, and also ordered those involved to undergo quarantine.
Meanwhile, the authorities have run checks on 765 premises all over the state and two in Sandakan were ordered to close after failing to comply with operation hours.
Twenty-six compounds have been issued to movement control order (MCO) violators in Kota Kinabalu (15), Tuaran (three), Putatan (three), Tenom (three) and Penampang (two).
