A TOTAL of 14,525 new Covid-19 cases were recorded in the 42nd epidemiological week (ME 42/2022) of October 16-22, an increase of 21.5% over the 11,957 infections in the previous week, health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said.

“Local Covid-19 cases rose by 21.6% to 14,493 cases from 11,916,” he said in a statement today.

However, imported cases in ME 42 dropped by 22% to 32 cases, from 41 in ME 41.

The number of deaths in ME 42 increased by 70.6%, from 17 to 29 cases while recoveries dropped 0.9% to 11,078 cases, from 11,180 in ME 41.

Noor Hisham said the average number of daily active cases in ME 42 was 24,867, a 9.4% drop from the previous week.

He said between January 25, 2020 and October 22, 2022, a total of 4,880,005 cumulative new cases and 4,816,278 recoveries were recorded.

The fatalities registered during this period totalled 36,444 while there were 7,087 clusters, with eight clusters still active.

Noor Hisham said the admission of Covid-19 patients to hospitals and low-risk Covid-19 treatment centres per 100,000 population rose by 6.9% in ME 42.

Admissions for categories one and two increased by18.2% while those for categories three, four and five were up 9.5%. – Bernama, October 24, 2022.