Covid-19: M’sia records singledigit new cases for past 5 days

PUTRAJAYA: Malaysia recorded only five new positive Covid-19 cases yesterday to mark a fiveday stretch for the country with single-digit new cases

Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said all the cases involved Malaysians, with three of them being imported cases due to infections among people who returned from overseas.

“The two local transmissions involved Malaysians who were detected from pre-referral screenings at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. No non-Malaysian cases were reported today,” he said at a media conference on Covid-19 here yesterday.

Dr Noor Hisham said the five new cases recorded yesterday bring the total Covid-19 positive cases to 8,648 – the number of active cases are now at 81.

Nine patients had recovered and discharged, bringing the cumulative recoveries to 8,446 cases; thus putting Malaysia’s recovery rate at 97.7 per cent.

Dr Noor Hisham said there were no Covid-19-related fatalities reported yesterday – the death toll remained at 121 cases, or 1.4 per cent of overall infection cases.

On the worries by some members of the community that some Covid-19 cases had yet to be detected, he said the government had taken the approach of tracking cases through clinical surveillance as well as target group screenings.

“The approach takes into consideration the factor of cost effectiveness and it was also carried out successfully in several countries to combat the Covid-19 pandemic without undertaking large-scale testing.

“With this approach, resources could be conserved and effectively used to conduct tests and screenings as the fight against Covid-19 is still a long way off,” he said.

Dr Noor Hisham said the clinical surveillance system for Covid-19 in Malaysia began on Feb 12 at Ministry of Health (MoH) health clinics and hospitals and as at July 2, the MoH had cumulatively reported 113 Covid-19 cases from the system of surveillance.

The surveillance also acts as an early detection and early warning system on the spread of Covid-19 in Malaysia.