KUALA LUMPUR, June 15 — Despite new daily Covid-19 cases showing signs of decreasing, the country’s infectivity rate has continued its uptrend for four consecutive days with the nationwide reading at 0.94 today, up 0.02 from yesterday.

Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said: "The Covid-19 infectivity rate, or the Ro/Rt reading, according to projections based on daily cases on June 15 for the entire country is at 0.94.”

He tweeted infographics late evening which showed Labuan, Sabah, Negri Sembilan, and Sarawak with the highest Rt readings at 1.05, 1.04, 1.03 and 1.01 respectively.

Kuala Lumpur showed an Rt reading of 0.99, Johor with 0.97, followed by Selangor with 0.96, while the rest of the states had readings below 0.9 while Perlis reported only one new case.

Rt measures the average number of people from the remaining vulnerable population that each new Covid-19 patient could infect. It must be under 1.0 in order for Covid-19 to be suppressed.

Malaysia today reported 5,419 new Covid-19 cases detected over the last 24 hours while adding 101 more Covid-19 related deaths.

Cumulatively, Malaysia has reported a total of 667,876 confirmed Covid-19 infections, of which 593,695 have recovered.

Currently, there are 70,112 active cases undergoing treatment or observation by the Health Ministry, with a total of 4,069 deaths with a fatality rate of 0.61 per cent.