KUALA LUMPUR: A total of 26,701 new cases of COVID-19 was reported yesterday, bringing the country's cumulative figure to 3,138,215 cases.

Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said of the new cases, 26,583 or 99.56 per cent were in categories one and two, while 118 cases or just 0.44 per cent were in categories three, four and five.

"Of the total, 26,569 were local cases and 132 others were imported cases," he said in a statement on the COVID-19 development, today.

A sum of 11,744 recoveries was recorded, bringing the cumulative total of recoveries to 2,888,194, while the number of those in the intensive care unit (ICU) stood at 216, with 141 requiring ventilator support.

Dr Noor Hisham said 19 new clusters were detected yesterday, bringing the total active clusters to 481.

He said the country's infectivity rate (Rt) stood at 1.32 with Labuan recoding the highest rate at 1.96, followed by Sarawak 1.56 and Sabah 1.51.


Meanwhile, Dr Noor Hisham said the ICU bed usage for COVID-19 cases in Johor and Kelantan was at 65 per cent and 50 per cent, respectively.

He said the bed usage at COVID-19 Quarantine and Treatment Centres (PKRC) in eight states had surpassed 50 per cent with Perak recording the highest at 74 per cent, followed by Negeri Sembilan at 73 per cent.

For non-ICU beds, nine states recorded over 50 per cent usage namely Perak (99%), Kelantan (96%), Selangor (93%), Perlis (93%), Putrajaya (85%), Kuala Lumpur (84%), Johor (80%), Sabah (79%) and Pahang (51%).

"Overall, the capacity of health facilities at public hospitals is still adequate to support COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 cases, but each state is fully prepared with emergency response action plan should they reach full capacity," he said.

Dr Noor Hisham said 1,469 cases were hospitalised yesterday, 947 or 64.5 per cent of which were in categories one and two, while 522 others (35.5%) in categories three, four and five.

He said there were cases in categories one and two that needed pre-emptive admission to PKRC and hospital due to medical emergencies, such as diabetes, uncontrolled high blood pressure and just diagnosed with uncontrolled non-communicable diseases.

-- BERNAMA