Sabah Police Say Ready With Enforcement If Inter District Travel Ban Restored

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Sabah Local Government and Housing Minister Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun speaks to the media in Kota Kinabalu, October 18, 2020. — Bernama picKOTA KINABALU, Jan 7 — As Covid-19 cases continue to soar again here and nationwide, Sabah police are prepared to enforce another inter-district travel ban in the event this was restored.
Sabah police commissioner Datuk Hazani Ghazali said that the police have issued a circular to district police chiefs notifying them of the possibility.
“Any directive will come from the National Security Council. But the police have to be prepared to act quickly in case it does,” he said.
The circular, which has been circulating on social media, told district police chiefs to make preparations for roadblocks and travel permission slip inspections.
An inter-district travel ban had been imposed in Sabah in October last year following a surge in Covid 19 cases following the state elections which ended on September 26. Aside from essential travel, no one was allowed in and out of the state either.
The ban was lifted in time for the festive year-end holidays and to spur economic activities, but it also caused a spike in cases over the last week, likely from social gatherings.
State Covid-19 spokesman Datuk Masidi Manjun said that today 363 cases out of the total 493 new cases today were from community infections, or cases found from close contact screening. 
The remaining are from individual symptomatic screenings (49), workplace screenings (19) and private swab tests (15).
Yesterday, some 60 per cent of the 405 new cases were from close contact screening. Masidi warned Sabahans that if the trend continued, social gatherings would be banned.
Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said today Malaysia could be heading for 8,000 new cases daily by mid-March if the infection rate rose even marginally.
The country recorded its highest daily figure of 3,027 new cases today. - malaymail

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