Covid-19 (March 16): 28,298 new cases, 105 deaths

COVID-19 | The Health Ministry reported another 28,298 new daily Covid-19 cases yesterday and 105 deaths.

Active cases stood at 299,332, which appeared to have plateaued in recent days.

New cases according to states are as follows:

Selangor (7,561)
Kuala Lumpur (3,565)
Johor (2,577)
Penang (2,441)
Kedah (2,034)
Negeri Sembilan (1,968)
Sarawak (1,555)
Perak (1,446)
Pahang (1,302)
Kelantan (995)
Terengganu (934)
Malacca (727)
Sabah (708)
Putrajaya (180)
Perlis (159)
Labuan (146)

Another 105 deaths attributed to Covid-19 was reported yesterday - the third highest this month - of which 29 was declared as 'brought in dead'.

Over the past week, an average of 86 people were reported to have died of Covid-19, while the average for the past 30 days was 65, indicating that Covid-19 deaths are on the uptrend.

Since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, a total of 34,099 deaths have been attributed to Covid-19.

There has been 1,350 reported Covid-19 deaths this month. For comparison, there were 771 deaths last month and 491 in January.

Malaysia has the highest number of deaths per capita in the Asean and East Asian regions with 997 deaths per 1 million population, and fourth-worst in Asia after Iran, Lebanon and Jordan – all in the Middle East.

Perak (21) reported the most deaths followed by Kedah (17), Johor (13), Selangor (12), Pahang (7), Kuala Lumpur (7), Malacca (5), Sabah (5), Penang (4), Negeri Sembilan (3), Sarawak (3), Terengganu (3), Kelantan (2), Perlis (2) and Putrajaya (1).

Some 7,832 Covid-19 patients are hospitalised of which 374 are in intensive care.

Malaysia is on a six-day downtrend in terms of hospitalisation of Covid-19 patients while daily admission numbers have stopped growing as well.

The utilisation rate of intensive care beds throughout the country was below 80 percent of capacity.