KOTA KINABALU – Healthcare workers treating Covid-19 patients continue to face problems with some island folks in Sabah, who flee upon seeing healthcare workers as they are stateless and do not have any identification documents to prove they are Malaysians.
Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said these residents of Omadal Island off Semporna ran away when they saw healthcare workers, as they refused to be treated in the public health facility.
They fear if they were admitted they would be detained by the immigration department and eventually deported.
“The health ministry is finding ways to persuade them into getting treatment… We need to discuss with their head of families and head of villages,” he said during his daily press briefing on Covid-19.
Omadal island is not under lockdown but health authorities have identified the existence of a cluster and today, 13 new cases were reported, taking the total number to 35 patients, to date.
Noor Hisham said the Health Ministry had faced turnaround time problem in the east coast Sabah district of Semporna, saying samples had to be sent to Kota Kinabalu by road.
The distance between Kota Kinabalu and Semporna is 531km or around eight hours drive.
“Then we had backlog cases in Kota Kinabalu and the samples had to be flown to Kuala Lumpur for testing.
“It will take about four to five days to know the results,” said Noor Hisham, adding that the ratio of infection was 60% or six out of 10 samples.
However, he said the situation in Sabah’s east coast is improving and in the “declining phase” and healthcare workers are now turning their focus on the west coast areas like Kota Kinabalu, Penampang and Putatan as the numbers are rising in the area.
Sabah recorded 466 new Covid-19 cases today; 56 cases are from existing clusters, and 70 are from two new clusters- Rumah Merah Cluster, Telipok Cluster and Sembulan Cluster, all in Kota Kinabalu.
Out of the total new cases, 193 cases were detected from close contact screenings, and 147 from other screenings.
Sabah also recorded three Covid-19 deaths today, one in Queen Elizabeth Hospital, in Kota Kinabalu, two involving foreigners in Tawau and one in the Duchess of Kent, Sandakan.
Meanwhile, Sabah Covid-19 spokesperson Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun in his daily update said the Sembulan cluster recorded 12 cases involving a courier company while the Rumah Merah cluster recorded 57 cases involving detainees in the temporary detention centres.
He said the Telipok cluster recorded 10 new cases after a worker of a rice factory tested positive for Covid.
On the distribution of food baskets, Masidi said a total of 104,209 food baskets have been distributed statewide.
On the food supply problem in Tawau’s Taman Semarak, the district disaster management committee has taken action to address the shortage.
Yesterday, around 10 residents from the lockdown area staged a protest demanding the authorities to allow them to buy food at the shop as their food supplies at home was running out. – The Vibes, October 30, 2020.
