MORE than 50% of the new infections reported today involve Covid-19 patients who exhibited no symptoms, health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said. 

Noor Hisham said that out of the 12,528 cases reported today, 6,840 are Category 1 patients, meaning they are asymptomatic. 

A breakdown of today’s new cases is as follows:

• Category 1 (no symptoms): 6,840 (54.6%)
• Category 2 (mild symptoms): 5,468 (43.6%)
• Category 3 (with pneumonia): 112 (0.9%)
• Category 4 (with pneumonia requiring oxygen therapy): 44 (0.4%)
• Category 5 (critical & requiring assisted ventilation): 64 (0.5%)

He added that over the past 14 days, the Ministry of Health (MoH) has also ramped up Covid-19 testing nationwide. 

Yesterday, 132,935 tests were done, out of which 65,171 were polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, while 67,764 were RTK antigen tests.

The highest number of tests were done in Selangor (46,681), followed by Kuala Lumpur (16,500), and Johor (10,611).

The health D-G said MoH still has the capacity to run more tests and that this can be done by roping in private laboratories. 

“This capacity will be used preferably to conduct targeted Covid-19 testing,” he added. – July 17, 2021.