COVID-19: 21 deaths today, highest in a single day

KUALA LUMPUR:Malaysia recorded 21 deaths today, the highest number of casualties so far due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The increase thus bring the cumulative number of casualties in Malaysia to 791.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health Malaysia (MOH) recorded 3,455 new COVID-19 infections within 24 hours – a slight decline compared to the previous few days.

Director-General of Health, Tan Sri Noor Hisham Abdullah, said of the total, five cases of imports were reported to have received infection from abroad while the rest were local transmission.

"There are currently 47,847 cases with active COVID-19 infectivity," he said in a statement on Tuesday. Currently, the total number of COVID-19 infections in Malaysia is 222,628 cases.

In the last 24 hours, Selangor still recorded the highest number of daily cases with 1,145 cases, followed by Johor (70 cases) and Kuala Lumpur (619 cases).

To date, a total of 327 patients are receiving treatment at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and out of that number, 145 people need respiratory assistance.

At the same time, the number of patients who recovered continued to record an increase of 3,661 cases, bringing the cumulative number of cases recovered to 173,990.