KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia on Monday recorded its highest daily COVID-19 death toll since the pandemic hit the country, with 219 fatalities reported over the last 24 hours.

Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah, in a statement, said the latest fatalities bring the total number of COVID-19 deaths in the country to 9,403.

The deaths involve 201 Malaysians and 18 foreigners, with 198 of them succumbing to the disease in hospital while another 21 died at home (BID).

A total of 105 fatalities were reported in Selangor, 41 in Kuala Lumpur, 24 in Johor, nine in Melaka, eight in Pahang, seven in Negeri Sembilan, six each in Kedah and Perak, four each in Kelantan and Terengganu, three in Sabah and one death respectively in Labuan and Perlis.

Dr Noor Hisham said of the 15,764 new COVID-19 infections reported today, 286 cases or 1.8 per cent were in Categories three, four and five while 15,478 cases, or 98.2 per cent were Category One and Two patients.

Category five refers to critical cases requiring ventilator support, category four are patients with pneumonia requiring oxygen support, category three involves those with pneumonia while categories two and one are those with light symptoms and who are asymptomatic respectively.

He said their status is based on the patients' clinical conditions just after being diagnosed with COVID-19.

"There are cases which remain in the same category throughout the infection period, but there are also those who improve to lower categories or worsen to higher ones.

"Overall, 3,525 cases or 22.4 per cent of the total number of cases reported today have been vaccinated with at least one dose," he said.

Dr Noor Hisham said 1,063 COVID-19 patients are being treated in the intensive care unit, with 532 of them requiring respiratory support.

Also, there were 11,767 recovered cases reported overnight, taking the total number of recoveries to 937,732. There are also 199,051 active cases currently, he said.

On the 29 new clusters identified today, Dr Noor Hisham said 13 of them were linked to the workplace, 11 in the community, three involved high-risk groups, and a religious and education cluster respectively.

Meanwhile, Dr Noor Hisham said the country's COVID-19 infectivity rate (R-naught or Rt) has been declining in the last three consecutive days, with 1.08 reported yesterday compared to 1.10 on July 31 and 1.12 on July 30.

Perlis is the state with the highest Rt with 1.53, followed by Terengganu (1.35) and Kelantan (1.25).

Other states also recorded an Rt above 1.0 except for Negeri Sembilan (0.93) and Labuan (0.63).

-- BERNAMA