KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 17 — Malaysia detected 19,631 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours, a very slight decrease from yesterday’s 19,740.

Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said in a tweet that the new cases today brings the total number of Covid-19 cases detected in the country since the pandemic began to 1,444,270.

Selangor and Sabah still remain the two states recording the highest number of cases, with 5,753 and 2,103 cases each respectively.

Six other states also recorded more than 1,000 cases today. They are Kedah (1,863), (Kuala Lumpur (1,765), Johor (1,309), Penang (1,275), Kelantan (1,268) and Perak (1,101).

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Remaining states recording Covid-19 cases were Sarawak (835), Pahang (470), Melaka (623), Terengganu (498), Negri Sembilan (490), Putrajaya (41) and Perlis (37).

“Once again, the Federal Territory of Labuan recorded zero cases today, praise be to God. I hope other states will follow in their footsteps with their complete adherence to the SOPs,” he said in a tweet.

Dr Noor Hisham said that seven cases reported today were imported while the remainder were transmitted locally.

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He said that of the 19,631 cases today, only 305 or 1.6 per cent of them are in categories 3, 4 and 5, while the remaining 19,326 or 98.4 per cent were in categories 1 and 2.

“16,638 or 84.75 per cent of the cases today also involve those who have only received one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine or have not had their vaccination at all,” he said.

He added that 293 deaths were also recorded today, involving 251 locals and 42 foreigners, adding that 44 of them were brought-in-dead (BID).

This brings the total number of deaths from Covid-19 in Malaysia to 13,077.

“As of today, there are currently 1,054 Covid-19 patients being treated in intensive care units (ICU), with 525 of them requiring breathing assistance,” he said.

He shared that 39 new Covid-19 clusters were also detected in the country, bringing the total number of active clusters in the country to 1,360.

He also shared that the nationwide rate of infection still maintains at 1.5 for a sixth day running. The state with the highest rate of infection is still Perlis (1.25), followed by Sarawak (1.23) and Kelantan (1.19).

On variants of concern (VOC), Dr Noor Hisham said that 43 new cases have been detected today, all of them involving the Delta variant.

“This brings the cumulative total of cases involving VOCs or variants of interest (VOI) to 710. Of the 710, 690 are VOCs while 20 are VOIs.

“As a whole, there are 467 cases involving the Delta variant, 209 involving the Beta variant and 14 cases involving the Alpha variant, while for VOI’s, there are 13 Theta variant cases, four Kappa variant cases and the Eta variant cases,” he said.

On a positive note, Dr Noor Hisham also shared that 16,468 people have recovered from Covid-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of recovered cases to 1,179,046 or 81.6 per cent.