KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 9 — A total of 17,134 new Covid-19 cases were recorded today, an increase of 3,190 cases from 13,944 cases yesterday, said Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.
He said the latest development brought the cumulative Covid-19 cases to 2,956,332.
Dr Noor Hisham, via his Facebook page, said that 17,048 new cases today (99.5 per cent) were in categories one and two while 86 cases (0.5 per cent) in categories three, four and five.
He added that category one recorded 4,722 cases or 27.56 per cent; category two (12,326 cases or 71.94 per cent); category three (58 cases or 0.34 per cent); category four (24 cases or 0.14 per cent) and category five (four cases or 0.02 per cent).
Meanwhile, in a statement, Dr Noor Hisham said of the total new cases, 130 were imported cases while 17,004 cases were local infections, and a total of 143 cases were being treated in the intensive care unit (ICU) with 78 of them requiring respiratory support.
He also said that 5,681 recoveries were reported today, taking the cumulative number of recovered cases to 2,829,752.
In addition, 15 new clusters were recorded with 385 clusters still active thus far.
“Other detailed information on the current situation of Covid-19 infection and transmission in Malaysia will be uploaded on the CovidNOW website at https://covidnow.moh.gov.my,” he said.
Dr Noor Hisham said the country’s infectivity rate (Rt) was at 1.39, with Sarawak recording the highest Rt at 1.68 followed by Perlis (1.65) and Sabah (1.59).
In the meantime, he said a total of 280 Covid-19 Variant of Concern (VOC) cases were reported from February 3 to 9, of which 185 were of the Delta variant and 95, the Omicron variant.
“The Integrative Pharmacogenomics Institute, Universiti Teknologi MARA (iPromise, UiTM) detected 188 new cases, UKM Medical Molecular Biology Institute (UMBI) (46 cases) and Institute for Medical Research (IMR) (46 cases),” he said.
Dr Noor Hisham said this brings the cumulative figure for SARS-CoV-2 infections categorised as VOC and Variant of Interest (VOI) to 7,398 cases. Of the total, 7,378 cases were VOC while 20 cases were VOI.
Of the VOC cases up to now, 6,435 were of the Delta variant; 696, the Omicron variant; 233, the Beta variant and 14, the Alpha variant.
As for VOI cases, 13 were of the Theta variant, Kappa variant (four) and Eta variant (three).
— Bernama
