Post-Aidilfitri week, new Covid-19 infections continue climb to 2,246 cases

KUALA LUMPUR, May 10 — The country’s new Covid-19 infections have continued its climb with 2,246 cases recorded in the last 24 hours, a steady upward trend that started since Hari Raya Aidilfitri celebrations last week.

The Ministry of Health’s CovidNow data also showed cases on a rising trend in the last seven days: increasing by 50 per cent in Labuan and 40 per cent in Perlis.

The seven-day trend, however, has fallen in most of the country, with Perak, Putrajaya and Sarawak seeing cases fall by more than half.

Numbers have been climbing since May 3, the day after Aidilfitri, when the country recorded one of its lowest number of new infections at 922 cases.

Following this, cases increased to 1,054 on May 4, 1,278 on May 5, 1,251 on May 6, 1,372 on May 7, 2,153 on May 8, and yesterday at 2,151.

The increasing number of new infections comes from the aftermath of the Aidilfitri celebrations, following Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah’s warning of a spike of positive cases.

As of today, 4,424,097 Covid-19 cases have been recorded in the country since the start of the pandemic, with 22,368 cases currently active.

Only one death was recorded yesterday with no brought-in-deaths, bringing the cumulative total number of deaths from Covid-19 to 35,584.

As of May 9 midnight, CovidNow data showed that from the active cases, 21,230 are undergoing home quarantine, while only four are at quarantine centres.

The number of hospitalised patients is 1,065, where 30 are unventilated and 39 are in need of ventilators.

A total of 2,433 patients have recovered, bringing the total of recoveries to 4,403,183.

Intensive care unit (ICU) utilisation for Covid-19 treatment is at 9.3 per cent (69) while utilisation of hospitals is at 11 per cent.

* Editor's note: An earlier version of this article contained an error which has since been rectified.