KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah government has given the green light to companies to purchase any of the government-approved vaccines for their employees.
Sabah Covid-19 spokesman Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun said employees would be inoculated with the purchased vaccines, be they Pfizer, Sinovac or AstraZeneca, at their respective companies' premises that would be turned into vaccination centres.
"The Sabah government has given permission to all companies and industries in Sabah to purchase supplies of Pfizer, Sinovac and AstraZeneca vaccines directly and conduct inoculation programme for their employees.
"The Sabah Health Department will help private clinics arrange the inoculation programmes at their respective premises or plantations," he said in a statement.
Today, Sabah recorded 1,066 new Covid-19 cases, the highest this year.
"As usual, close contact screening contributed the most at 60.04 per cent, with 640 cases. Kota Kinabalu is the highest with 125 close contact cases.
"Symptomatic and clusters screening were respectively contributed to 157 cases, while other 141 cases were from targeted screening," said Masidi, while also reminding the people to strictly follow the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).
He added that 77.8 per cent of the patients today either had light or no symptoms and do not require hospitalisation. They are instead placed at public Quarantine, Low-risk Treatment Centres (PKRC).
Two new clusters were also declared in the state today, namely the Batu Dua cluster in Tawau and Jalan Gunsapau cluster in Ranau, Kota Marudu.
"The Batu Dua cluster involved infection in a bakery workplace. The index case was an unemployed man, aged 58, from Batu 2 Lorong Habib Abdul Rahman.
"The symptomatic man tested positive at a private hospital on July 17 and had infected his household, including his son who worked at the bakery. The son then infected eight colleagues.
"To date, out of 66 contacts that were screened, 27 tested positive. Three samples were negative and another 36 samples are still awaiting results," Masidi said, adding that close contact tracing is still ongoing.
For the Jalan Gunsapau cluster, the infections involved social contact in Kampung Tagibang, Kampung Pugi Gunsapau, and Kampung Nawanon in Kota Marudu district.
"The index case was a woman, 24, who was confirmed positive on July 21 and infected her housemate. To date, out of 164 samples, 64 were positive while another 100 were negative," he said.
Six fatalities were recorded today. Three were in Beaufort and one each in Sandakan, Kudat and Penampang.