Covid-19 (Dec 19): 3,108 cases, lowest in 7 months

COVID-19 | The Health Ministry reported 3,108 new Covid-19 cases today, bringing the cumulative infections to 2,718,955.

The fresh infections today is the lowest since May 3.

They comprised 2,970 Malaysians (95.6 percent) and 138 non-citizens (4.4 percent).

The new cases today were surpassed by a total of 3,701 Covid-19 patients who recovered today. This is expected to help reduce the number of active cases.

• Patients in ICU: 390
• Intubated: 211

 As of today, the number of Covid-19 patients (including suspected ones) in the intensive care unit (ICU) is 4.2 percent lower compared to a week ago.

Those who require intubation have also declined by 2.3 percent from a week ago.

The R-naught, or infectivity rate, has also declined to 0.91 as of yesterday. The value must be kept under 1.0 to prevent exponential growth in new cases.

Nationally, the number of hospital admissions of confirmed Covid-19 patients in the last seven days have declined by 14.1 percent compared to the preceding week.

The Health Ministry will only publish today's breakdown of new cases by states after midnight on its CovidNow portal.

The breakdown by states for yesterday (Dec 18), where 4,083 new cases were reported, is as follows:

Selangor (1,114)
Kelantan (447)
Johor (407)
Malacca (272)
Pahang (249)
Penang (248)
Sabah (237)
Kedah (237)
Kuala Lumpur (236)
Perak (228)
Terengganu (163)
Negeri Sembilan (128)
Sarawak (41)
Putrajaya (35)
Perlis (33)
Labuan (8)

To date, 252 Covid-19 clusters are still active, including two new clusters reported today.

The ongoing clusters have seen an increase of 3.7 percent from the 243 active clusters a week ago.