Several medical staff in Sabah positive for Covid-19

Sabah Health Department director Datuk Dr Christina Rundi says the detection of several positive Covid-19 cases among medical staff was done through screening programmes. - NSTP/File pic

By Olivia Miwil - April 8, 2020 @ 11:11am

KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah Health department has detected several Covid-19 cases among healthcare professionals.

Its director Datuk Dr Christina Rundi, however, did not reveal the number of those found positive with the infection.

“The detection of several positive Covid-19 cases among medical staff was done through screening programmes.

“The checks were done on those who just reported for duty, with overseas travel histories and had close contact with infected persons,” she said in a statement.

Dr Christina said the screening was conducted by the Occupational Safety unit at all health facilities in the state.

As of yesterday, Sabah recorded 241 cases with one more from Putatan. Out of the number, 61 or 25 per cent have recovered from the disease.

She said there are still 85 patients under investigation, while 43 with Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI) are being treated at hospitals in the state.

“The Health department would like to remind the people to continue practicing preventive measures and abide by the movement control order.

“This is because there are still samples that need to be processed,” she said, adding there are 12,413 samples from 195,350 people who were screened for Covid-19.

She said 4,104 staff and members of the public had received mental health and psychosocial support.

“We also received 2,628 phone calls, conducted 1,048 psycho-education sessions and sent out 3,220 infographics via Whatsapp,” she added.