Eight Sabah districts lagging behind in vaccinations

KOTA KINABALU: Eight Sabah districts continue to remain in "isolation" as they have yet to reach the 60% fully vaccinated mark to open up its borders for inter district travel within zones.

Out of an initial nine districts, only the interior Keningau district managed to cross the 60% fully vaccinated mark five-days after the state government relaxed inter-district travel within five zones across the state on Oct 1.

Two urban east coast Sabah districts; Tawau and Sandakan, together with Kinabatangan, Telupid, Tongod, Semporna, Papar and Nabawan, have yet to cross the mark.

State officials also seem puzzled over the slow pace with minister Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun seeking answers from the respective district officers heading the vaccination task force.

"The question to the district councils and municipal council (Tawau and Sandakan) presidents who are chairman of the respective district Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF), why they couldn't but others could achieve it?," he said when contacted.

Masidi, who is state Covid 19 spokesman, said that the state CITF calculates their zoning eligibility based on statistics submitted by the CITF district chairman.

"Only they know the answer (for the delays)," he said.

Sabah Community Development and People Well-being Minister Datuk Shahelmey Yahya also gave little indication on the reasons why the districts were failing to reach their respective targets.

However, he did not rule out the possibility of both anti-vaxxers, as well as general fear of injections as among reasons for district ground teams failing to reach out to the target populations.

Sabah seems to lag behind in the nation's vaccination drive which is coming close to 90% of the adult population being fully vaccinated.

Sabah's daily vaccinations were averaging about 20,000 daily, a far cry from the momentum it picked up early last month where daily vaccinations averaged between 45,000 to 60,000.

As of Oct 3, 2,327,677 or 74.5% of the adult population have received their first dose of vaccine, while 1,828,673 or 66.3% have been fully vaccinated.

A total of 273,889 or 64.% of the adolescents have taken their first dose since Sept 16 while 780 of them have been fully vaccinated.

A total of 805 new Covid1-19 cases were reported Tuesday (Oct 5).