OMICRON WAVE SEES 21,315 NEW INFECTIONS
This takes the country’s cumulative cases past the three million mark to 3,061,550, says Dr Noor Hisham
NEW Covid-19 cases in the midst of the Omicron wave showed a slight increase, with 21,315 infections logged over the last 24 hours.
The country had on Sunday logged 21,072 Covid-19 cases. The majority of the new infections, however, were in Category 1 and 2.
Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said 99.59 per cent of the total cases reported yesterday were also in Category 1 and 2.
“Category 2 cases made up 70.50 per cent or 15,028 cases today (yesterday), while 29.09 per cent or 6,200 cases were in Category 1.
“The remaining 0.41 per cent of cases or 87 patients were listed in Category 3, 4 and 5. There were 48 cases in Category 3, followed by 23 and 16 for Category 4 and 5, respectively,” he said.
Category 1 cases were asymptomatic; Category 2 cases had symptoms but with no pneumonia; Category 3 cases were symptomatic with pneumonia; Category 4 cases were symptomatic with pneumonia and required supplemental oxygen; and, Category 5 cases were critically ill with multi-organ involvement.
The new cases took the country’s cumulative total past the three million mark to 3,061,550.
Dr Noor Hisham said the national infectivity rate (Rt) up to Sunday stood at 1.43, a decrease of 0.06 from 1.49 reported the day before.
He said the Rt value had also decreased in states nationwide, with Labuan’s value dropping drastically from 2.14 on Saturday to 1.90 on Sunday.
The Rt value in some states surpassed the national value, namely Sarawak (1.61), Sabah (1.60), Penang (1.44) and Perlis (1.43). However, the values at these states showed decreasing trends as well.
The Rt value in other states was between 1.22 and 1.37, with Kuala Lumpur having the lowest at 1.22.
Meanwhile, data from the Health Ministry’s CovidNow portal showed that on average, five out of 1,000 people in the country were estimated to have been infected with Covid-19 in the last two weeks.
There were currently 155,673 active cases, while 5,724 recoveries were reported on Sunday. Cumulative recoveries stood at 2,852,437.
Data showed that a 6.9 per cent positivity rate was reported from the 210,889 Covid-19 screenings conducted daily.
Over a seven-day average, a total of 17,493 Covid-19 cases were transmitted sporadically, while 510 were transmitted via clusters.
Ten new Covid-19 clusters were detected on Sunday, adding to the total of 6,596 clusters, with 421 (6.4 per cent) currently active. On Sunday, the country also reported 11 Covid-19 fatalities, with five being brought-in-dead (BID) cases.
The national death toll increased to 32,125 with 6,493 BIDs.
The nationwide average Covid19 deaths stood at 41 per 10 million people over the last two weeks, with Perak recording the highest average fatalities at 92 deaths, followed by Johor (61), Kedah (59) and Terengganu (55).
The country’s current fatality rate stood at 0.1 per cent, with an overall rate of 1.1 per cent.
The national average bed utilisation for Covid-19 patients was at 65.2 per cent up to Sunday, with seven states reporting utilisation of above 70 per cent.
The highest bed usage was in Johor at 81.4 per cent, followed by Melaka (80 per cent), Kelantan (74.3 per cent), Negri Sembilan (73.8 per cent), Terengganu (72.8 per cent), Penang (71.9 per cent) and Selangor (71.5 per cent).
The national average for Intensive Care Unit (ICU) utilisation rate for Covid-19 was at 55.1 per cent
Kuala Lumpur had the highest ICU utilisation rate, inching closer to the 80 per cent mark at 76.9 per cent, while other states hovered between 16.7 and 75 per cent. A total of 65,042,686 Covid-19 vaccine doses had been administered up to Sunday, with 118,875 vaccines being administered daily.
On average, at least 98.7 per cent of the adult population had been vaccinated with one dose, 97.6 per cent with two doses and 56.4 per cent of the adult population had completed their vaccination cycles, including booster shots.
About 4.8 per cent of children aged 5 to 11 had been inoculated with one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine under the Covid-19 National Immunisation Programme for Children (PICKids) since Feb 2.