Bernama file photo shows a health worker conducting a Covid-19 swab test.
KOTA KINABALU (July 17): There is a slight respite in the Covid-19 infection cases in Sabah on Sunday as the number recorded is 43 cases lower than that of Saturday.
State Covid-19 spokesperson Datuk Seri Panglima Masidi Manjun said 231 cases were reported compared to 274 on Saturday.
The Local Government and Housing Minister said the reduction was due to the fact that the state capital recorded a huge drop in infections.
“Kota Kinabalu recorded 137 cases yesterday but only 63 today. A few other districts namely Tawau, Lahad Datu, Tenom and Kudat also recorded a decline in cases,” he said.
Penampang however recorded a two-fold increase from 24 cases on Saturday to 80 today making it the top contributor to the Covid-19 statistics in Sabah.
The other district that recorded an increase in cases was Sandakan while 14 other districts did not report any new infections in the last 24 hours.
Masidi disclosed that the sudden change in the daily infection rate in some districts such as Kota Kinabalu and Penampang is due to the longer time taken to complete the screening of test samples which are in huge numbers on certain days.
As a result, some test results were not registered on the same day and had to be brought forward to be registered the following days.
From the 231 cases on Sunday, 228 are in categories 1 and 2 while the remaining three are in categories 3, 4 and 5 respectively.