KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 24 — The Health Ministry reported a whopping 1,228 new Covid-19 cases today, its highest tally since the virus broke out here.
Sabah alone saw 889 new cases, Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said.
Seven new deaths were also registered today, bringing the total number of deaths from Covid-19 to 221.
Of the 889 new Covid-19 cases in Sabah today, 500 cases were from clusters, including the two new Mesra and Megah clusters while 253 were detected from close contact screenings and 136 from Covid-19 screenings done.
Negri Sembilan recorded the second highest number of new Covid-19 cases nationwide at 96, all of which come from clusters, including 54 from the new Kaya cluster.
Selangor and Kedah both registered 76 new Covid-19 cases, with 101 new cases detected from existing clusters combined, 36 from close contact tracing, 13 from Covid-19 screenings and two from returnees from Sabah.
The remaining states registering new cases are Penang (23), Labuan (21), Perak (10), Sarawak (eight), Kuala Lumpur (eight), Johor (seven) and Melaka (three).
Dr Noor Hisham said 92 Covid-19 patients are under intensive care, 31 of which need help breathing via ventilators.
Of the seven new deaths today, six were Malaysian men between the ages of 47 to 88, all of whom have a history of health complications who died in hospitals in Sabah.
The last death was a 63-year-old man from Perak who died in Penang Hospital.
On October 18, Dr Noor Hisham said that Malaysia would have seen an upward trend of nearly 5,000 Covid-19 new cases daily by month’s end had the infectivity rate, or R-naught (R0), was not lowered from 2.2 to 1.5 in recent weeks.
He added that public health efforts have successfully decreased the value from 2.2 recorded earlier this month to between 1.3 and 1.5 at present.
