KOTA KINABALU: Sabah’s Covid-19 daily cases dropped to 1,395 on Saturday (Sept 18), from 1,533 cases previously.
State Covid-19 spokesperson Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun said the downtrend in new cases recorded in the last few days was in tandem with the increase in the number of vaccinated people.
However, he said this should not lull the people into complacency on the continuous need to comply with all the standard operating procedures (SOPs).
"Vaccination does not give 100% protection against Covid-19 infection, it only lessens the severity of its symptoms.
"Sarawak is a good reminder that a higher percentage of your population vaccinated does not guarantee that infection would not recur.
"Infection can still happen especially if you have the more infectious variants like Delta.
"But in the case of Sarawak, 99% of their recent cases are in Category 1 and 2 because most of their people have been fully vaccinated," he said.
Masidi, who is state Local Government and Housing Minister, said another matter that was beyond control is the cases involving offshore oil and gas (O&G) workers.
"Infections can still happen on the high seas so we will have to depend entirely on the companies involved to enforce SOPs and take care of their workers.
"If and when infections happen, it normally involves many workers and that can result in significant increases in the overall Covid-19 statistics for Sabah," he explained.
On the backlog of cases, Masidi said, "They are still there but it is slowly being cleared off. Hopefully we will have the actual figure for the last 24 hours soon."
Out of the 1,395 cases reported on Saturday, 33.19% were those registered late between two to three days, 4.23% were delayed for four to five days, while 2.58% were those registered later than five days.
Meanwhile, Kota Kinabalu district recorded a significant drop of cases, from 269 on Friday to 160 infections on Saturday.
A new workplace cluster dubbed Sawit Safoda in the Kinabatangan district was also reported, with 23 cumulative cases so far.