KUALA LUMPUR: For the second straight day, Malaysia has breached the 5,000 threshold of new Covid-19 cases.
Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the country logged 5,446 new infections as of noon today, pushing the nation's total caseload to 2,678,465.
This is an increase from yesterday's 5,020 reported cases.
Of today's new cases, 5,426 were local transmissions while 20 were imported cases.
"Category 1 and 2 patients make up 98.4 per cent (5,358) of today's new infections. The remaining 1.6 per cent or 88 cases, are Category 3, 4 and 5 cases," he said in a statement today.
Dr Noor Hisham also said there were 419 patients currently being treated in the intensive care units nationwide, of whom 324 are confirmed Covid-positive and the others categorised as suspected, probable and under investigation.
Of those in ICU, 232 are on ventilator support. These comprise 147 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 85 classified as patients under investigation or suspected to have the virus.
Dr Noor Hisham said 28 people succumbed to the virus yesterday, four of whom were brought-in-dead cases.
Meanwhile, he said 5,427 recoveries were recorded today, raising the recovery tally to 2,586,822.
Dr Noor Hisham also said the ministry had detected 17 new clusters, bringing the cumulative number of active clusters to 254.
As of yesterday, the country's Covid-19 infectivity rate (Rt) stood at 0.98.
Perlis reported the highest Rt value at 1.07 followed by Penang and Negri Sembilan at 1.02 each; Pahang (1.01); and Melaka (1.0).
Labuan, Perak, Kuala Lumpur, Selangor and Kedah each recorded Rt values of 0.98; followed by Terengganu and Johor (0.97); and Kelantan (0.95).
States with Rt value below the 0.9 level were Putrajaya at 0.89, Sabah (0.88) and Sarawak (0.7).
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