Covid-19 (March 31): 18,560 new cases, 10k in S'gor alone

COVID-19 | The Health Ministry said 18,560 new daily Covid-19 cases was reported yesterday.

More than half the new daily cases were reported in Selangor alone.

However, active cases (206,855) throughout the country is still easing - down down 29.7 percent compared to 14 days ago.

Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah reported that the R-number as of March 30 was 0.88. A R-number below 1.00 would suggest that the spread of Covid-19 was decelerating.

New cases according to states are as follows:

Selangor (10,735)
Kuala Lumpur (1,188)
Negeri Sembilan (1,077)
Johor (954)
Penang (790)
Perak (751)
Sarawak (639)
Kedah (607)
Pahang (480)
Malacca (338)
Terengganu (325)
Kelantan (271)
Sabah (214)
Putrajaya (101)
Perlis (48)
Labuan (42)

Another 44 deaths attributed to Covid-19 was reported yesterday, of which eight was declared as "brought in dead".

Over the past week, an average of 45.6 people were reported to have died of Covid-19, while the average for the past 30 days was 71.9, indicating that Covid-19 deaths are on the downtrend.

Since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, a total of 34,983 deaths have been attributed to Covid-19.

There have been 2,235 reported Covid-19 deaths this month. For comparison, there were 770 deaths last month and 491 deaths in January.

As the current Omicron wave ebbs, the number of deaths reported this month is much lower than the worst month of the Delta wave - there were 9,669 deaths reported in September 2021.

Malaysia has the highest number of deaths per capita in the Asean and East Asian regions with 1,056 deaths per 1 million population, and is the fourth-worst in Asia after Iran, Lebanon and Jordan - all in the Middle East.

The highest number of deaths was reported in Perak (12), followed by Selangor (11), Johor (6), Sarawak (5), Penang (3), Kelantan (2), Sabah (2), Terengganu (2) and Negeri Sembilan (1).

There are 4,521 Covid-19 patients who are hospitalised. Hospitalisation of Covid-19 patients is on a 21 day low.

Currently, there are 267 Covid-19 patients who require intensive care.