COVID: New cases dip below 5,000 today

KUALA LUMPUR: New COVID-19 cases today dropped below the 5,000 mark to 4,626 cases, bringing the cumulative total to 2,688,149 cases, said Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

He said from the total daily cases, 4,531 cases were patients in categories one and two while the remaining cases were in categories three, four and five.

"There are 396 patients being treated in intensive care units (ICU) while 211 cases require respiratory assistance," he said in a statement here today.

On the number of recoveries, Dr Noor Hisham said 4,690 cases were reported, taking the overall cases of recoveries from the virus to 2,596,509.

Apart from that, he said six new clusters were identified and there is a total of 250 active clusters in the country now.

In this regard, he said 298 new cases were of variants of concern (VOC) which were reported for the period from Nov 19 to Dec 8 involving Delta, Beta and Omicron variants.

"This brings the cumulative cases infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus which are categorised as VOC and variants of interest (VOI) to 4,990 cases," he said.

Dr Noor Hisham said the infectivity rate (Rt) in the country now is 0.97 as of yesterday.

-- BERNAMA