THE number of new Covid-19 cases dropped to three digits today with Malaysia recording 660 cases as of noon, said Health Director-General Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

This is a sharp drop from the daily four-digit infections reported consecutively since November 13.

However, the total number of cases in Malaysia hit 50,390 today.

Noor Hisham said from the cases today, Sabah accounted for more than half, with 387 new cases. Of which 262 were from existing clusters.

Klang Valley, on the other hand, reported 173 cases, which was a decline of 66.6% from yesterday’s 518 cases.

He also said that Sabah and Perak each reported two deaths, which brought the Covid-19 death toll to 322.

Active cases stood at 12,814.

Meanwhile, 630 patients were discharged from hospitals after recovering from the coronavirus in the past 24 hours.

With this, the total number of recoveries from Covid-19 now stands at 37,254.

Some 103 patients are currently warded at the intensive care unit (ICU), whereby 41 are intubated.

Meanwhile, 171 of today’s cases were attributed to prison and detention-centre clusters, while four were imported.

Health authorities also discovered eight new clusters of infection, bringing the number of active clusters to 167.

Other states that reported new cases were Selangor (139), Negeri Sembilan (31), Perak (16), Penang (16), Labuan (13), Kedah (11), Putrajaya (1) and Malacca (4).

Sarawak, Johor and Kelantan each reported three cases. – November 18, 2020.