MALAYSIA’s progress towards an endemic phase of Covid-19 looks promising as key Covid-19 indicators today show encouraging signs.

First, the number of Covid-19 recoveries in the country continued to outnumber new cases for the 11th consecutive day.

Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said that Malaysia reported 16,430 recoveries against 10,959 new infections.

The new cases reported today are the lowest since July 12.

Noor Hisham said that only 205 or 1.9% of the cases reported today were in the more serious stages of categories 3, 4 and 5, while 10,754 or 98.1% of them were in the less severe categories of 1 and 2, displaying no to mild symptoms.

Meanwhile, the number of cases in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) dropped to three digits today from 1,058 yesterday.

The health DG said 980 patients are treated in the ICU, of which 862 are confirmed Covid-19 cases while 118 were suspected cases and cases under investigation.

He added that 579 of them were on respiratory support, a drop by one from yesterday’s 580.

Of them, 378 were confirmed for Covid-10 while 201 were suspected, probable and cases under investigation.

Besides this, Noor Hisham said that 19 new Covid-19 clusters were reported as of noon today, which accounted for 332 cases.

He said of the 19 new clusters, nine were linked to workplaces (190 cases), eight traced to community transmissions (115 cases), one high-risk group (13 cases) and one detention centre cluster (14 cases).

Noor Hisham said that Kelantan accounted for the greatest number of clusters today with eight, of which seven were community transmission cases and one linked to the workplace.

Other states and territories reporting new clusters are Johor with three, Perak and Sarawak (two each), and Kuala Lumpur, Kedah, Negri Sembilan and Pahang (one each).

This brings the total number of clusters reported in Malaysia to 5,432, of which 1,165 are still active while 4,267 have ended. – September 27, 2021.