18 new cases detected, 10 more patients discharged

PETALING JAYA: Malaysia recorded another 18 cases of Covid19 but the death toll remains at 121, says Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

“Of the 18, four are imported cases involving three Malaysians and a foreigner who is either a Malaysian resident or was allowed entry for work purposes.

“The rest are local infections among foreigners in Malaysia.

“There are no local cases involving Malaysians,” the Health director-general said yesterday.

Of the 14 local infections, nine were from the Pedas cluster in Negri Sembilan linked to factory workers, two from the Sepang Immigration depot cluster, two were detected in Sabah and one in Kuala Lumpur.

“One of the cases in Sabah involved an inmate who was screened before being released from prison while the other was detected in a patient with severe respiratory acute infection (SARI).

“The case in Kuala Lumpur was detected at a construction site,” he added.

Last week, after four consecutive days of single-digit new cases, Malaysia registered 10 cases on Saturday and 18 yesterday.

Dr Noor Hisham said that as of noon yesterday, there were 8,634 positive cases, with 195 active cases.

Currently, two Covid-19 patients are being treated at the Intensive Care Unit but are not on ventilators.

He also said 10 Covid-19 patients had recovered and were discharged, putting the recovery rate at 96.3%.

There were no new deaths reported.

Dr Noor Hisham also revealed that only 4.3% of foreigners screened for Covid-19 lately tested positive for the disease.

“Since June 27, we tested 60,298 foreigners and 95.3% of them came back negative. We are still waiting for the test results of 0.4% or 282 of those tested,” he said.

Dr Noor Hisham said 105 foreigners who tested positive were still being treated while 2,465 had recovered and discharged.

There were also five deaths involving infected foreigners.

He said the nine cases from the Pedas cluster reported yesterday had been under quarantine.

“Employers also have a role to play to ensure workers follow standard operating procedure to curb the rise of Covid-19 infections as Malaysia enters the recovery phase,” he said.