PETALING JAYA: Sabah and Kedah, the two states currently with the highest number of Covid-19 cases, have continued to record triple digit infections.
Sabah and Kedah made up most of the 293 new cases recorded yesterday, with 126 and 113 cases respectively, said Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.
In Kedah, out of the 113 cases, 112 were from the Tembok cluster in the Alor Setar prison, which will be put under targeted enhanced movement control order starting tomorrow.
The other remaining case in Kedah was from the Bah Rose cluster.
In Sabah, out of its 126 new cases, 31 were from across three different clusters, while 78 were detected from screening of symptomatic individuals, 12 from close contact screening and two from workplace screening.
The remaining three cases involved a Severe Acute Respiratory Illness case, a community screening case and a hospital ward screening case.
Meanwhile, Selangor had 31 cases, Johor had eight, Labuan had five and Kuala Lumpur had three while Perak and Negri Sembilan each had two.
Penang, Kelantan and Sarawak had one new case each.
Yesterday, two new clusters were also detected – the Kau Sing cluster in Tawau, Sabah and the Embun cluster in Hulu Langat, Selangor.
The new clusters brought the total number of active clusters in Malaysia to 34, of which most were in Sabah, Kedah and Selangor.
Dr Noor Hisham said the index case for the Kau Sing cluster was a 29-year-old man detected to be Covid-19 positive following a screening for symptomatic individuals on Sept 25.
“He was then admitted to Hospital Tawau. Following that, close contact screening was carried out and six more Covid-19 cases were identified and also admitted to Hospital Tawau, ” he said in a press statement yesterday.
For the Embun cluster, Dr Noor Hisham said the index case was a 41-year-old man who tested positive for Covid-19 via a screening for symptomatic individuals on Sept 29.
He was admitted to Hospital Sungai Buloh and close contact screening detected another four positive cases linked to him.
“All of these positive cases involved Malaysians and they were also admitted to Hospital Sungai Buloh for treatment, ” he said.
The cause of transmission for both clusters remains under investigation.
Dr Noor Hisham also said that yesterday, 67 patients had recovered with a total of 10,283 recoveries made or 83.1% out of the overall number of cases since the Covid-19 outbreak began.
The death toll remained at 137 or 1.1% out of the total number of cases.
There are now 1,961 active cases being treated at the country’s health facilities, with 28 patients in the intensive care units and four of them requiring ventilator support.
