Case numbers remain high, but infectivity goes down

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia recorded 19,378 new cases of Covid-19 yesterday, with Selangor still topping the table with 3,613 cases.

Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said cumulatively, Malaysia has had 1,805,382 Covid-19 cases since the pandemic started early last year.

“On Friday, there were also 330 fatalities, bringing the death toll to 17,521.

“There were also 22,399 recoveries, which means 1,528,672 have recovered from the disease nationwide,” he said in a statement.

He said 975 patients were receiving treatment in intensive care units, with 463 requiring ventilation support.

Dr Noor Hisham said for the second day straight Malaysia’s Covid-19 infectivity rate or R0 (R-naught) was below 1.0 with a reading of 0.97 yesterday.

“This is a positive sign as many economic and social sectors have been opened recently and the situation looks controlled and shows it is gradually becoming better.

“Of the 19,378 cases recorded on Friday, 332 cases (1.7%) were Categories 3, 4 and 5 while 19,046 cases (98.3%) were Categories 1 and 2.

“A total of 8,847 cases (45.7%) recorded were not vaccinated, 4,638 cases (23.9%) had received at least one dose while the remaining 5,893 cases (30.4%) were fully vaccinated,” he added.

Dr Noor Hisham said 34 new clusters had been identified yesterday, bringing the number of active clusters nationwide to 1,476.

He added that 20 of the new clusters were workplace clusters, eight were community clusters, four were high-risk clusters, one each was an education cluster and a religious cluster involving 1,109 cases.

He said 764 cases were attributed to the workplace clusters, while 236 cases were recorded within the community clusters.

“Seventy-two cases were identified within the high-risk clusters while 24 cases and 13 cases were recorded within the education and religious clusters, respectively.”