PUTRAJAYA: Malaysia’s Covid-19 numbers continued to rise with 7,654 new cases reported in the country yesterday.

       The last time the country had more than 7,000 new cases in a day was on June 5.

       In his daily Covid-19 statement, Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the country’s cumulative tally of cases was now 792,693.

       The Klang Valley contributed to more than 60% of Malaysia’s cases yesterday.

       Selangor had 3,260 cases, while Kuala Lumpur had 1,550 and Putrajaya had 33.

       More than half of Selangor’s cases were from close contacts of Covid-19 patients (1,981 cases), while the rest were sporadic (31%), cluster-related (7%) and imported (one case).

       Kuala Lumpur’s 1,550 cases was a new daily high with most related to clusters (770 cases).

       Dr Noor Hisham said the national infectivity rate on July 5 was at an Rt level of 1.07, with Pahang having recorded the highest Rt level at 1.24.

       An indicator of how fast the virus is spreading, the R value shows the average number of people who contracted Covid-19 from an infectious person. An Rt value – the effective reproduction number – of less than 1.0 is a good sign.

       While R0, or R-naught, is the initial reproduction number of the virus at the beginning of the pandemic, Rt refers to the reproduction number at a particular point in time.

       Meanwhile, there were another 103 Covid-19 related fatalities, the Health Ministry reported yesterday.

       This takes the country’s Covid-19 death toll up to 5,677.

       Of the new fatalities, 94 were Malaysians while nine were foreign nationals.

       Selangor had the most with 43 deaths.

       The oldest victim was a 100-year-old woman who died at Hospital Sultanah Aminah in Johor Baru. She had high blood pressure.

       Two 21-year-old men were the youngest casualties. One of them had diabetes and he died at Hospital Sungai Buloh. Another was a brought-in-dead (BID) case at Hospital Sultan Haji Ahmad Shah in Temerloh, and he had a history of epilepsy.

       There were 12 BID cases reported in total.

       The number of patients in intensive care increased to 943, up from 923 on Monday, with 450 patients needing breathing assistance.

       Active cases have also gone up, with yesterday’s total increasing to 72,701 from 69,477 the previous day.

       Another 21 new Covid-19 clusters were detected by the ministry, taking the number of active ones to 852.

       Of the new clusters, 11 are from workplaces, nine are from the community, while another at a detention centre.