COVID: New cases up Friday but more recoveries reported as well - Health DG

On the other hand, recovered cases also showed an increase today after 6,517 recoveries were recorded compared to 5,337 cases yesterday.

"Of the new cases today, 125 cases or 1.9 per cent involved categories three, four and five, while the remaining 6,392 cases or 98.1 per cent are category one and category two cases," he told a media conference here today.

Dr Noor Hisham said there are currently 544 cases being treated in the intensive care unit, 269 of whom require respiratory support.

Besides this, nine new COVID-19 clusters were detected overnight, taking the number of active clusters to 286, he said, adding that the country's infectivity rate (Rt) had also shown a slight increase to 1.0, five weeks after the ban on interstate travel was lifted.

Meanwhile, Dr Noor Hisham said generally, COVID-19 transmissions in Malaysia were still under control but added that precautionary measures continue to be taken.

He said COVID-19 daily cases, recoveries and fatalities began to decline around the 36th epidemiological week (ME), in line with the increase in vaccination rates through the COVID-19 National Immunisation programme (PICK) that kicked off on Feb 24.

Dr Noor Hisham said up to Nov 11, more than 75.7 per cent (24,730,649) of the Malaysian population have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, while 95.1 per cent (22,258,551 adults) have received their full dosage.

"The launch of the COVID-19 vaccination exercise on a major scale has succeeded in reducing the number of cases and hospital admissions," he said.