Covid-19: No plans to keep schools in Sabah closed, says Masidi

KOTA KINABALU: Sabah has no immediate plans to defer the reopening of schools amid an increasing number of Covid-19 cases that hit four digits for the second day on Sunday (Feb 6), says Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun.

"Not at the moment," the state Covid-19 spokesman said when asked if the state government was considering keeping schools, especially primary schools closed pending children between ages five and 11 getting vaccinated under the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme for Children (PICKids) that had just started on Thursday (Feb 3).

On Feb 4, the state disaster management committee said that schools in the state with at least two positive Covid-19 cases would be closed down for seven days with effect from Monday (Feb 7).

Masidi had said that the cases would have to include at least one internally transmitted case among students or teachers, or the staff. The decision was based on the current Covid-19 situation in Sabah.

In his statement on Sunday (Feb 6), Masidi said that the number of new cases in Sabah continues to increase at a high rate with the state recording 1,285 new cases, 80 cases higher than Saturday (Feb 5).

"Clearly Covid-19 virus is already widely established in the community and is triggering the rapid spread and infection among people," he said, adding that 47.55% of new infections Sunday were sporadic cases.

"They are only noticed when patients experience symptoms of Covid infection. This is the category of patients obtained through symptomatic screening.

"The number of this category was higher than the number of patients who were close to the index case (45.37%)," he explained.

He said symptomatic screening was high in urban areas and as an example almost 50% of new cases in Kota Kinabalu are from the symptomatic screening category.

Another factor for the high number of cases, he said, was the "careless or indifferent" attitude of some people to the need to comply with SOPs either when gathering with friends or when in public.

"For example, the use of face masks and physical distance is becoming more slack. This careless attitude facilitates infection and in turn increases the number of new patients," he added.

Masidi said that, subject to confirmation from Sabah Health Department, the new cases this week could be linked to the Omicron variant that spreads faster although causing milder symptoms than other variants.

The propagation rate of the variant which was the dominant variant in the neighbouring Philippines is 1.8 faster than the normal variant, he said.

The same variant also resulted in a high increase in cases in Singapore and in many countries around the world.

On Sunday's cases, he said four districts recording three-digit cases was Kota Kinabalu (300 cases) Sandakan (201 cases), Tuaran (150 cases) and Penampang (108 cases).

A total of 14 other districts recorded double-digit cases, six districts with single-digit and only three districts did not record any new infections.

A total of 1,276 out of 1,285 cases on Sunday were under Category 1 and 2. There were five cases in Category 3 and three cases in Category 4 and one case in Category 5.