INTENSIVE care unit usage for Covid-19 patients remains high with 1,298 beds occupied as of noon today, director-general of health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said.

Of the cases, 960 are confirmed Covid-19 patients while the remaining 338 are categorise as suspected cases and cases under investigation.

There are also 744 patients who are on respiratory support, Noor Hisham said a statement this evening.

Of the 744 patients, 444 are confirmed Covid-19 cases while 300 are suspected cases and cases under investigation.

Noor Hisham said there are 20,980 recoveries against 19,198 infections. His statement did not state the number of active cases.

Almost 99% (18,945) of the new infections reported today are categories one and two patients who show mild or no symptoms.

The remaining 1.3% (253) new cases are in the more severe categories of three, four and five. These are patients who have pneumonia, need oxygen or are on ventilators

As for new Covid-19 clusters, 34 were reported today, bring the total of active clusters in the country to 1,440.

No figure on the number of deaths today was included in Noor Hisham’s statement.

The omission of figures on deaths and active cases is due to the new approach the Health Ministry is taking in making Covid-19 data public.

These data will instead be updated on the ministry’s new CovidNow website after midnight daily.

This morning, ministry officials said the format will differentiate between “reported deaths” and “actual deaths”.

Reported deaths will be the figure for all deaths announced in a day, including those that were previously not logged on the actual date they occurred. 

Actual deaths, meanwhile, is the figure of Covid-19 fatalities that occurred on the given date.

Yesterday, 592 deaths were announced but only 100 of them were patients who died that day.

Ministry officials said the backlog of deaths has been included when announcing the fatality figures because of the time needed to complete clinical investigations, and health frontliners have been overwhelmed with the surge in infections and high occupancy rates in hospitals in recent months.

By focusing on actual deaths daily, the overall trend is showing that the number of deaths due to Covid-19 has been on a downward trend since September 2. – September 12, 2021.