Covid-19 (Feb 12): 22,802 cases, highest in 170 days

COVID-19 | The Health Ministry reported 22,802 new Covid-19 cases today, bringing the cumulative infections to 3,019,163.

The fresh infections are the highest in 170 days, since Aug 26.

They were more than the number of Covid-19 patients who recovered, which totalled 5,442. This is expected to increase the number of active cases.

A total of 94 cases (0.4 percent) were imported while the remaining 22,708 (99.6 percent) were domestic transmissions.

As of yesterday, the national infectivity rate (R number) stood at 1.51. The value must be kept under 1.0 to prevent an exponential spread of the virus.

The states with an infectivity rate above the national average are Labuan (2.31), Sarawak (1.82) and Sabah (1.65).

The Health Ministry will only publish the case breakdown by states after midnight on its CovidNow portal.

The breakdown by states for yesterday (Feb 11), when 20,939 new cases were reported, is as follows:

Selangor (4,291)
Sabah (3,361)
Johor (2,860)
Kedah (1,623)
Kelantan (1,589)
Penang (1,490)
Negeri Sembilan (1,235)
Kuala Lumpur (1,095)
Pahang (1,008)
Malacca (988)
Perak (443)
Terengganu (293)
Sarawak (214)
Putrajaya (190)
Labuan (132)
Perlis (127)

The number of cases in Johor, Kelantan, and Pahang are the highest on record.

At present, 176 Covid-19 patients are in the intensive care unit of which 98 are unable to breathe on their own and have been intubated.

This is an increase of 43.1 percent compared to the 123 Covid-19 patients in the intensive care unit a week ago.

To date, 415 Covid-19 clusters are still active, including 11 new clusters reported today.

The ongoing clusters have seen an increase of 17.6 percent from the 353 active clusters a week ago.