KOTA KINABALU: Sabah is ramping up its testing capability as the Covid-19 new cases in the state continue to soar.
State Health director Dr Rose Nani Mudin said the department had to do a lot of contact tracing which led to the increase in workloads at the laboratories.
Among measures to expedite the tests include outsourcing, increasing the number of staff, extending working hours and increasing the test capacities, she said.
On Tuesday, Sabah breached new record with 3,376 daily Covid-19 cases with 17 deaths.
Dr Rose said the results of 1,300 from yesterday's total cases were samples taken more than a week ago while the rest were within six days.
"Now, the Covid-19 infection is spreading in the community. Everyone is at risk of infecting others or being infected.
"At this time, individual preventions are key to curb the virus spread," she said in a statement, adding that these measures include wearing masks, physical distancing, no physical touching and frequent handwashing.
On vaccination, she said Sabah had received 53,000 doses of Cansino vaccine and would get another batch of the single-dose vaccine within this week.
As of Aug 23, there are 1,469,376 or 53.3 per cent of adults in Sabah had received one dose of vaccine and 866,228 (31.4 per cent) had completed their inoculation.
"Sabah Health Department and the state government will continue to increase the vaccination rate through outreach programme at rural and remote areas, apart from opening up more centres for 'walk in'.
"I urge people of Sabah to take the Covid-19 vaccines to save their lives and family members. Based on our data, between 80 and 90 per cent patients at the intensive care unit are those not vaccinated."
Previously, infectious specialist Dr Timothy William had said Sabah would brace for the rise of Covid-19 cases for at least another month.
He had also said with the vaccination focusing adults only, children including infants below 1 year old are at risk of getting infected.
For the past three weeks, about 25 per cent of the Covid-19 caseloads involved those below 18.