Covid: 27,808 new cases recorded yesterday - Health DG

KUALA LUMPUR - The country recorded 27,808 new Covid-19 cases yesterday (Feb 18), bringing the cumulative figure to 3,166,023 cases, said Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

He said of the total, 27,705 cases or 99.63 per cent were in categories one and two while 103 cases or 0.37 per cent were in categories three, four and five.

"Of the total new cases, 27,689 are local transmissions while another 119 are imported cases,” he said in a statement on the development of Covid-19, today.

A total of 12,488 recovered cases were recorded, bringing the cumulative total of recoveries to 2,900,682, while the number of those in the intensive care unit (ICU) stood at 235 people with 132 of them needing respiratory assistance.

Dr Noor Hisham said 16 new clusters were detected yesterday, bringing the total active clusters to 486.

He also said that the country’s infectivity rate (Rt) stood at 1.27 with Labuan recording the highest rate at 1.99 followed by Sarawak 1.50 and Sabah 1.47.

Meanwhile, Dr Noor Hisham said ICU bed usage for Covid-19 cases in Johor recorded 70 per cent while Perlis (64 per cent) and Kuala Lumpur (59 per cent).

He said the bed usage at Covid-19 Quarantine and Treatment Centres (PKRC) in nine states had surpassed 50 per cent with Perak registering 86 per cent, followed by Selangor (80); Negeri Sembilan (69); Terengganu (62); Kelantan (60); Sabah (59); Penang and Perlis (54) and Melaka (50) respectively.

For non-ICU beds, eight states recorded over 50 per cent usage, namely Kelantan (108 per cent), Johor (105), Perak (104), Selangor (95), Perlis (93), Sabah (85), Kuala Lumpur (76) and Putrajaya (66).

"Overall, the capacity of health facilities in public hospitals can still accommodate Covid-19 and non-Covid-19 cases, but each state is fully prepared with emergency response action plan should they reach full capacity,” he said.

He said Covid-19 patients who needed a ventilator increased to 132 patients and the percentage of ventilator use was 36 per cent.

Dr Noor Hisham said the Health Ministry had also detected 168 new cases of Variant of Concern (VOC) from Feb 13 to 19.

It consists of 33 Delta variant cases and 135 Omicron variant cases. This brings the cumulative number of cases infected with ARS-CoV-2 virus, categorised as VOC and Variant of Interest (VOI), to 7,754.

Of the total detected, 7,734 cases were VOC while 20 cases were VOI.

"Overall, to date, under VOC, there are 6,537 Delta variant cases, 950 (Omicron variant), 233 (Beta variant), and 14 (Alpha variant).

"Meanwhile, for the VOI cases, there are 13 Theta variant cases, four (Kappa variant) and three (Eta variant) recorded,” he said. -BERNAMA