COVID-19: 374 new infections, three deaths as case tally surpasses 15,000 mark

Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the number of active cases now stands at 4,161, with three more deaths reported overnight.

Sabah continued to report the highest number of new cases with 277, but this is mainly due to more screenings done, particularly in areas under the Enhanced Movement Control Order (EMCO) and Administrative EMCO, he said.

“Selangor reported 44 cases, followed by Kedah with 27 cases, all involving Tembok cluster, while Sarawak recorded nine cases, Kuala Lumpur (four) and three in Penang.

“There were two cases each in Johor, Perak and Labuan, and one case in Melaka and Putrajaya,” Dr Noor Hisham said in an online media conference via the Health Ministry’s Facebook account here today.

Dr Noor Hisham said of the total number of new cases, 372 were local transmissions while only two were imported cases, involving a Malaysian and a foreigner returning from the Philippines.

As for local transmissions, 343 cases involved Malaysians and the rest were foreigners.

“Seventeen of the of local transmissions were those who had returned from Sabah, bringing the total number of cases with a history of travel to Sabah since Sept 20 to 341 cases," he said.

On the three fatalities, he said all of them involved Malaysians in Sabah, with the country’s death toll now at 155 cases.

He said the 153rd fatality was a 61-year-old man with a history of diabetes and Ocular tuberculosis at Tawau Hospital; the 154th a 54-year-old woman suffering from diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity at Queen Elizabeth Hospital while the 155th death was a 51-year-old man with diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease at Semporna Hospital.

Dr Noor Hisham said there were 73 recoveries today, bringing cumulative recoveries to 10,780 cases or 71.4 per cent of the case tally.

He said to date, there are 73 cases being treated in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) with 28 of them requiring respiratory aid.

Meanwhile, Dr Noor Hisham said cases in Kedah were under control of late as the majority of them were from the Tembok prisons cluster and clusters from areas placed under the EMCO, namely Kota Setar and Aman Jaya.

“However, there are also clusters linked to those who returned from Sabah but so far they have been controlled, and with contact tracing activities, we have managed to track down close contacts for these clusters.

“There were 27 cases detected in Kedah today, and out of that number, 14 involved the Kota Setar Prison while 13 cases were from the Pokok Sena Prison," he said when responding to questions on the situation in Kedah, particularly in the prisons.

Meanwhile, via Twitter, Dr Noor Hisham said Malaysia's ability to conduct 41,354 Reverse Transcriptase - Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests a day is comparable to many other countries.

“Currently, Malaysia conducts 51.96 tests for 1,000 people. This is higher than South Korea, Japan and Thailand," he said.