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KOTA KINABALU – Sabah has received the first batch of 53,000 doses of the CanSino Covid-19 vaccine today, while the next batch will arrive later this month, said state Health Director Dr Rose Nani Mudin.
She said the single-dose CanSino vaccines will help accelerate Sabah’s inoculation programme, which has seen more than 1.46 million people in the state getting their first dose and 866,228 others completing both doses as of yesterday.
“A total of 53.3% of the adult population in Sabah have received their first dose and 31.4% have received their second dose,” she said in a statement tonight.
Sabah Chief Minister Datuk Hajiji Mohd Noor was reported to have said earlier that the state government had requested Sabah be prioritised in the distribution of the CanSino vaccine, and asked the federal government to provide 1.8 million doses of the shot.
Dr Rose Nani said the state government and Health Department will continue to ramp up inoculation by intensifying vaccination outreach efforts to rural areas, and open more walk-in vaccination centres.
In urging everyone to get vaccinated, she said the department’s data showed that 80 to 90% of Covid-19 patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) were unvaccinated individuals.
“Currently, the Covid-19 infection is widespread within the community, and everyone is at risk of being infected and infecting others. At this time, prevention at the individual level is key to halting the spread of the virus.
“Compliance with standard operating procedures, including wearing face masks in public and open spaces, practising physical distancing of 1m, not touching (each other) and constant washing of hands need to be observed,” she said.
Regarding late registrations, Dr Rose Nani said this tends to occur when there is a rise in fresh cases as the workload of lab personnel would increase as well.
As such, she said several improvement measures are being implemented, including outsourcing, increasing the number of personnel conducting tests, extending work hours until midnight, and increasing technical capabilities of testing. – Bernama, August 24, 2021