Sabah's largest cluster spreads to fourth district Sipitang

Kota Kinabalu: Sabah’s largest Covid-19 cluster Kepayan Prison has spread to four districts with the latest being Sipitang as the state recorded another prison cluster in Sandakan on Wednesday.

Data released by the Ministry of Health on Tuesday began to show that the Kepayan Prison cluster had reached Sipitang after Papar and Penampang from its starting point Kota Kinabalu.

Latest data indicated the cluster had 24 new cases, which raised its total cases to 1,784, of which 1,014 were active.

Kepayan Prison also became Malaysia's biggest prison cluster when it registered a 44-case surge on Tuesday and surpassed the Tembok cluster in Kedah's Alor Setar Prison in terms of cumulative cases.

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The Sandakan Prison cluster saw 34 new cases, raising its total to 39 with 254 test results pending.

The new cluster came just after the announcement of two earlier clusters involving illegal immigrants' detention facilities, namely the Tawau and Kota Kinabalu Temporary Detention Centres.

The Kota Kinabalu centre, commonly known as Rumah Merah, which is also the name given to its cluster that is now under total lockdown, had 11 new cases, increasing its total to 415.

The Tawau cluster known as PTS Tawau had no new cases but was reported on Tuesday to have had 106 cumulative cases, 103 of which were active.

Sabah’s former biggest cluster Benteng LD, with over 1,000 cumulative cases, also started in a detention facility, namely the Lahad Datu police headquarters lockup, but it has dwindled to a few active cases.

Clusters involving detention/correctional facilities in the peninsula such as the Tembok (Kedah prison), Seberang Perai Prison and Penang Remand Prison clusters have all proven to be major clusters of the disease.

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The Benteng LD and Kepayan Prison clusters were the main drivers of Sabah's daily caseload for weeks until they began to show signs of dissipating, letting the close contact category of cases take over as the main factor for case rises.

Close contact cases, which had been somewhere in the 100s and 200s ranges, broke the 300-case mark for the first time when the state recorded 367 cases on Wednesday.

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