KUALA LUMPUR, March 22 — The Health Ministry today reported 17,828 new Covid-19 infections in the last 24 hours, a slight decrease from 19,105 cases recorded yesterday.
This brings the cumulative infections to 4,010,952 from the time Covid-19 arrived in the country in 2020, Health Director-General Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said in a statement.
The number of people who died of the coronavirus similarly showed a slight decrease to 63 compared to the 71 recorded on Monday. Of today’s new fatalities on record, 21 died before reaching hospitals.
As of today, a total 34,463 people have died of the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic.
The latest number of people who recovered came to 28,003, raising the cumulative recovered cases to 3,712,668.
Hospitalisation
Dr Noor Hisham also disclosed that only 156 or 0.88 per cent of cases reported today were in Categories 3, 4 and 5 that required hospitalisation. He said the rest of the cases reported only had mild symptoms.
“There are currently 358 patients being treated in intensive care units (ICU), of which 217 are suspected, probable or under investigation for Covid-19.
“Out of these 358, 199 need ventilators to help them breathe, including 79 who are confirmed as Covid-19 positive,” he said.
In the statement, Dr Noor Hisham said five states are currently using more than 50 per cent of their ICU bed capacity.
They are: Kuala Lumpur (63 per cent), Kelantan (58 per cent), Johor and Selangor (57 per cent each), as well as Perak (51 per cent).
There are nine states with over 50 per cent of non-ICU beds used for Covid-19 patients. They are: Selangor (89 per cent), Putrajaya (88 per cent), Terengganu (78 per cent), Kuala Lumpur (75 per cent each), Perak (68 per cent), Melaka (68 per cent), Perlis (66 per cent), Sarawak (56 per cent), and Kelantan (50 per cent).
As for Covid-19 quarantine centres, no states currently have more than 50 per cent of their beds utilised.
Dr Noor Hisham said the number of Covid-19 patients in need of respiratory aid has decreased to 199 people.
Overall, he said the current percentage of ventilator use stands at 22 per cent for both patients with Covid-19 and those without.
New Covid-19 clusters
Dr Noor Hisham said two Covid-19 clusters were detected by the Health Ministry in the past 24 hours, resulting in 292 clusters that are currently active.
