THERE were 18,053 recoveries against 15,669 new cases reported today, said director-general of health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

This will be the 14th consecutive day that recoveries have outnumbered new infections.

Dr Noor Hisham said that of the new 15,669 cases reported today,15,386 or 98.2% of them were in the asymptomatic and mild symptomatic categories of one and two.

The remaining 283 or 1.8% were in categories three, four and five, which are considered more severe. These patients have pneumonia, need oxygen or are on ventilators.

Bed usage in intensive care units (ICU) and the number of patients on respiratory support also showed a reduction compared to yesterday.

There are a total of 1,266 patients in ICU today, of which 954 are confirmed Covid-19 cases while the remaining 312 are categorised as suspected cases and cases under investigation.

As for those on respiratory support, Dr Noor Hisham said that 689 patients were on ventilators.

Of these, 432 were confirmed Covid-19 cases and the remaining 257 were suspected cases and cases under investigation.

Yesterday, 1,312 patients were in ICU and 698 of them needed respiratory support. 

The health ministry also traced 29 new Covid-19 clusters, taking the total number of clusters in the country to 5,182.

Including the clusters reported today, the health DG said 1,448 clusters are still active while 3,734 have ended.

On the breakdown of new clusters, Dr Noor Hisham said that 14 are linked to workplaces, 12 to community transmission and three traced to high-risk groups.

Kelantan reported the most number of clusters today with 10, where nine were traced to community transmissions and one to a  workplace.

Other states that reported clusters are Johor (five), Perak (four), Pahang and Sarawak (three each), Selangor (two), Penang and Kuala Lumpur (one each).

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.

The health ministry reported 413 new Covid-19 deaths as of midnight last night, taking the nationwide toll to 21,124.

According to data provided by the ministry, only four of the victims actually succumbed to the disease yesterday. The remaining 409 deaths were backlog cases that had been previously unreported. – September 14, 2021.