Masidi, who is the state’s official Covid-19 spokesman, said this was among the strategies of the department to manage the high number of positive cases in the state.
“If the symptoms are manageable, normally they (patients) will be advised to stay at home and treatment will be done at home,” he said in his daily Covid-19 update at his office here.
“So that will save them from going to treatment centres. The whole idea is that we want to make sure they don’t infect other (family) members.
“For instance this works well if they are staying alone or two (persons) are staying at the same place but able to quarantine themselves.”
He added the patients would need to undergo screening first and the department would then decide who needed to be admitted or treated at home instead.
Masidi, who is also second state finance minister, was responding to claims that certain patients were not called up to the hospital for treatment and instead only contacted some time later to be warded.
Earlier, he said the hospitals in Sabah still had sufficient beds for Covid-19 patients despite operating at maximum capacity.
“This is because of the strategy of the state Health Department to place Level 1 and 2 patients at modified treatment centres, allowing people with more serious conditions to be warded at hospitals,” he said, adding there were 23 such centres statewide.
Meanwhile, he said non-citizens accounted for 13.3%, or 1,236, of the 9,868 positive cases statewide, adding there were 27 clusters involving foreigners from among the 35 identified in the state.
On another note, Masidi said 13 teachers, 27 students and two Education Department staff were reported to have been infected with the virus as of today.
He said there was no indication these people came from any specific cluster although health officials were still investigating.
To a question on how infections could spread from the Benteng cluster in the east coast Lahad Datu district to the west coast despite an inter-district travel ban imposed, he said this was because of people coming back after voting in the recent state election.
On the drastic spike in infections in the state capital, Masidi explained this was due to the Kepayan cluster which involved 156 cases of the 233 reported in Kota Kinabalu in the last 24 hours.
These comprise 145 prisoners, nine prison staff, one former inmate and one close contact to a staff.
He said health officials were also trying to clear a backlog of 6,653 tests for Covid-19, with the help of three private laboratories.
“After this, we will get a more realistic figure that will reflect the actual cases in Sabah,” he said, adding 72,823 food baskets had been distributed to target groups as of today.
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