PETALING JAYA: There were 1,869 Covid-19 patients who were hospitalised on Monday (March 7), of whom 61% were in the milder Categories 1 and 2.

       Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said 725 of the hospital admissions on Monday were from Categories 3, 4 and 5.

       “Some Covid-19 cases that are in Categories 1 and 2 are deemed high-risk and require admission to low-risk quarantine centres (PKRC) or hospitals as a precautionary measure.

       “The clinical condition of patients is dynamic and could decline or improve throughout their infection,” said Dr Noor Hisham in his daily Covid-19 statement on Tuesday (March 8).

       According to the Health Ministry’s hospital admission graph, the rate of daily Covid-19 admissions has remained the same over the past seven days.

       Currently, there are 304,304 active Covid-19 cases nationwide, of which 291,827, or 95.9%, are undergoing home quarantine.

       There are 368 patients in intensive care units (ICU), with 223 of them requiring ventilator support.

       There were 30,726 Covid-19 cases discharged on Monday, more than the number of new cases, which was 26,856.

       Dr Noor Hisham said of the 26,856 new cases, 99.3% were Categories 1 and 2.

       Another 81 cases were classified as Category 3, 57 were in Category 4 and 50 in Category 5.

       There are seven states and localities where the ICU bed utilisation rate is more than 50%, he added.

       The seven states are Kelantan (73%), Putrajaya (67%), Kuala Lumpur (62%), Johor (61%), Selangor (60%), Perak (53%) and Labuan (57%)

       The country’s Covid-19 infectivity rate remains at an RT level of 1.05, Dr Noor Hisham also said.