Efforts underway to ease overstretched medical facilities in Tawau, says Masidi

KOTA KINABALU: Efforts are underway to ease congestion at the hospital and quarantine centres that are reaching full capacity in Sabah's east coast Tawau amid rising Covid-19 cases.

Sabah Covid-19 spokesman Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun (pic) said that the state Health Department was taking necessary action to resolve the problems of three quarantine centres that had reached nearly full capacity.

"But things are getting better by the day but we are not out of the woods yet," he said when contacted Thursday (April 29).

Medical facilities are being stretched in Tawau due to the rising number of cases in the district which has been under the movement control order.

He said that the state health authorities had to re-open the army field hospital and the low-risk quarantine centre two weeks ago.

The field hospital and quarantine centre were closed some time prior to the sudden spike in cases in Tawau.

He said specialists from Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Kota Kinabalu as well as doctors and nurses from other districts have been mobilised to Tawau to assist the hospital.

"The state health authorities can no longer depend on staff from outside Sabah as other states are struggling as well," Masidi added.

He said the low-risk quarantine centre had to be reopened to take in those not needing hospital care as they did not want them to be kept under home quarantine as there was concern over non-compliance of SOP by such patients.

Datuk Nizam Abu Bakar Titingan, who is state Assistant Finance Minister and Apas assemblyman, said that the district hospital was full and the three quarantine centres with capacities of about 600 people were nearly full following a spike in cases since April 3.

"The situation is getting critical and worrying in Tawau. The district hospital is already full and the quarantine centre at Tawau Sports Complex and others are nearly full," he said following his meeting with the Tawau district disaster management committee.

Tawau Health Department officer G. Navindran also urged people in the district to observe SOP as many were not taking the threat seriously.

He also noted that those who had come in direct contact with positive patients or with symptoms were coming in very late for their swab tests.

Tawau district as well as neighbouring Lahad Datu and Sandakan are under MCO while the rest of Sabah slid back into the conditional MCO from today after it was placed on recovery MCO earlier this year.