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PETALING JAYA: As Sabah prepares to go to the polls, another Covid-19 cluster has emerged in the state, this time dubbed the Pulau cluster in Kunak on the east coast. There are now nine positive Covid-19 patients, all from the same family, in the group, says Chief Health Officer Tan Sri Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah.
“The index case, patient number 9,940, is a 68-year-old Malaysian woman.
“They found her unconscious at her home and took her to Kunak Hospital, then referred her to Tawau Hospital for treatment for a heart attack, stroke, and liver disease, where a Covid-19 test came back positive on September 13.
“She is now being treated in the intensive care unit (ICU) and needs respiratory support,” Dr. Noor Hisham said yesterday at a press conference in Putrajaya.
After contact tracing and active case finding, another eight tested positive and all are members of the index case family.
As of yesterday, 128 people, including 109 citizens and 19 non-Malaysians, had been tested in the group.
For Benteng Lahad Datu’s group, Dr. Noor Hisham said the four new reported cases had brought the group’s total number to 424.
Of the 424 patients, 186 are Malaysians, while the remaining 238 are Filipinos and Indonesians.
A total of 6,610 people had been examined in the Lahad Datu and Tawau group.
Benteng’s LD group was sparked by the arrest of two illegal immigrants.
Dr. Noor Hisham, who revealed that the effective breeding number, or Rt, in the state was 1.70 as of Sept. 13, warned the Sabahans to take security measures into account during state elections.
The Rt is the average number of people in a population that can be infected by an infectious person.
An Rt value less than one is generally considered safe, as it shows that the outbreak is likely to disappear, while a value greater than two indicates that the infectivity rate is doubling.
“We have a standard operating procedure for the election and we encourage the public to abide by it,” he said.
Dr. Noor Hisham was answering a question about whether it was safe to hold state elections in Sabah amid emerging groups in the state and Sabah with a high Rt.
Meanwhile, for the Enhanced Motion Control Order (MCO) zone at Kota Setar in Kedah, Dr. Noor Hisham said the ministry estimated that 15,000 people from 10 high-risk districts would be screened.
The Enhanced Targeted MCO, which is in effect through Sept. 25 after the Sungai and Telaga groups emerged, has seen 12,885 Malaysians screened so far.
Both groups originated from health workers in two public and private hospitals in the state.
“We suspect that the Sungai cluster has a great possibility of involving the D614G mutation,” he said, adding that investigations were ongoing.
Previously, the D614G mutation of the Covid-19 virus was detected in the Sivagangga group in Kedah and the Ulu Tiram group in Johor.
The mutation is said to make the virus 10 times more infectious than the original strain.
(Sivagangga’s group began with a restaurant owner in Kedah who had visited a city of the same name in India, while Ulu Tiram’s group involved a religious center in Johor.)
Meanwhile, Malaysia registered 23 new cases yesterday, 13 of them transmitted locally.
“Of the 13 local broadcasts, 10 involved Malaysians and three non-Malays. All local broadcasts happened in Sabah, ”said Dr. Noor Hisham.
The 10 imported cases came from the Philippines, while the other countries were Hungary, Turkey, Qatar, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Morocco.
Six patients recovered yesterday and there were no fatalities.
There are currently 632 active cases in the country, 14 cases in the ICU and four require respiratory assistance.
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