Sabah achieves target of more than 60, 000 jabs per day

 

Sabah Covid-19 spokesman Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun said the state Health Department created a new record yesterday by administering 62,365 doses of the vaccines in one day. -NSTP file pic

KOTA KINABALU: As Covid-19 cases in the state reached another high, Sabah has surpassed its target of more than 60,000 vaccine jabs per day in order to achieve herd immunity.

Sabah Covid-19 spokesman Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun said the state Health Department created a new record yesterday by administering 62,365 doses of the vaccines in one day.

"As of yesterday, 48.4 per cent of the adult population in Sabah have received at least one dose while 25.8 per cent have been fully vaccinated," he said in a statement.

The Sabah government had been focused on increasing its vaccination rate and restricting most movements to only those who are fully vaccinated to contain the chain of infection.

The state also aims to vaccinate 60 per cent of its population by Sept 21, provided supply remains uninterrupted and consistent.

Last week, the state Health Department doled out an average of 50,000 vaccinations per day.

Today, Sabah recorded 2,583 new cases with 11 fatalities – four in Tawau, three in Kota Kinabalu, two in Keningau and one each in Ranau and Tuaran.

Masidi said the continuing surge in Covid-19 cases was due to the state Health Department trying to clear the backlog of test samples.

"The daily cases will remain high over the next few days until the state Health Department can clear all the backlog samples.

"Backlog cases are positive cases that are only registered five days or more after the results of screenings are known.

"Today 289 cases or 11.2 per cent of the caseload are cases registered late (backlog), among them are the 188 cases in Kota Kinabalu, 58 in Penampang and 40 in Putatan," he said.

As usual, close contacts remained the largest contributing factor to the rise of cases with 1,503 or 58.19 per cent.

"Cases from symptomatic screenings were 686 (26.56 per cent), existing clusters were 123 (4.76 per cent), other category made up 149 cases (5.77 per cent) and targeted screening registered 122 new cases (4.72 per cent)," he said.

Masidi added that 18 compounds were issued across the state for various Covid-19 standard operating procedure violations, with Sabah recording an overall SOP compliance rate of 95.1 per cent. - NST