PETALING JAYA: Malaysia recorded the highest number of daily Covid-19 infections since the pandemic began with a new high of 27,831 cases, said Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

       The new record surpassed the 24,599 daily infections recorded on Aug 26 last year.

       Dr Noor Hisham said 99.65% of the new cases were in Categories One and Two that were either asymptomatic or mild.

       “Of the total number of infections, only 10 cases (0.04%) were in Category Five, while 87 cases (0.31%) were under Categories Three and Four,” he said yesterday.

       Cases under Categories Three, Four and Five are deemed severe and require either hospital admission or intensive care treatment, including the need for ventilators.

       Six Covid-19 deaths were reported yesterday.

       Of the total daily new cases, he said 27,713 involved locals while 664 were foreigners.

       He added that 7,912 patients have recovered, bringing the total number of recoveries to 2,876,450 or 92.5% since the outbreak began.

       A total of 3,111,514 cases have been recorded in the country since the outbreak two years ago.

       Meanwhile, Dr Noor Hisham said as of yesterday, a total of 1,269 cases required hospital admission.

       “Of this, 428 cases (33.7%) were in Categories Three, Four and Five while 841 cases (66.3%) were under Categories One and Two,” he said.

       Meanwhile, Dr Noor Hisham noted 204 patients required ICU treatment, of which 105 were Covid-19 cases while 99 cases were still under investigation.

       He added that 116 cases required ventilators, while 53 cases were confirmed Covid-19 infections and 63 were still under investigation.

       Dr Noor Hisham said 28 new clusters were detected yesterday, bringing the total number of active clusters in the country to 467.

       On hospital bed usage, he said, intensive care unit (ICU) admissions stood at 61% in Johor while Kuala Lumpur recorded a 50% usage.

       As for non-critical bed use, he said nine states also recorded more than 50% usage.

       This, he said, were Selangor (97%), Kelantan (88%), Perak (85%), Perlis (84%), Sabah (82%), Putrajaya (79%), Johor (79%), Kuala Lumpur (71%) and Penang (54%).

       He said bed usage at the quarantine centres had also surpassed the 50% mark in Melaka (100%), Selangor (82%), Negri Sembilan (79%), Pahang (71%), Kelantan (67%), Sabah (64%), Johor (63%), Kedah (62%) and Perak (56%).