THE number of patients in Covid-19 intensive care units (ICU) remained high despite the country reporting more recoveries than new infections in the past 24 hours, Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said today. 

The director-general of health said 1,312 patients were treated in ICU, where 967 of them were confirmed Covid-19 cases and the remaining 345 were categorised as suspected cases and cases under investigation. 

Apart from this, he said, 698 patients were on respiratory support. Of them, 444 were confirmed Covid-19 cases and the remaining 254 were suspected cases and cases under investigation. 

Yesterday, 1,298 patients were in ICU and 744 of them needed respiratory support.  

On the positive note, Noor Hisham said there were 24,813 recoveries against 16,073 new cases reported today.

This would be the 13th straight day that recoveries have outnumbered new infections, during which the country also reported its highest daily recovery at 24,855 on September 9. 

Noor Hisham said of the 16,073 new cases today, 98.5% of them were in the asymptomatic and mild symptomatic categories of one and two. 

The remaining 1.5% were in categories three, four and five, which are considered more severe. These patients are those who have pneumonia, need oxygen or are on ventilators. 

As for Covid-19 clusters, the Health Ministry traced 32 new ones today. 

Sixteen of them were linked to workplaces, 14 traced to the community and one each detected at the high-risk group and an educational institution. 

Of the 32 new clusters, nine were traced in Johor, where eight stemmed from workplaces and one from the sole high-risk group. 

Following Johor, Sarawak had the most number of clusters, at six, where all of them were community transmission. 

Other clusters detected were in Kelantan and Perak (four each), Pahang and Kedah (two each), Penang, Sabah, Selangor, Malacca and Negri Sembilan (one each). 

Meanwhile, 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. 

Yesterday, Malaysia logged 292 Covid-19 deaths as of 11.59pm, 99 of which were calculated to have occurred on the day based on the seven-day average, the ministry said. 

It added that 193 of the fatalities were backlog cases that were previously unreported. 

The Covid-19 death toll now stands at 20,711. – September 13, 2021.