PETALING JAYA: Covid-19 recoveries have outnumbered the total number of new cases for the second day straight, as daily infections remained below the 30,000 mark.

       Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said 30,726 Covid-19 patients in the country were considered recovered from infection on Monday.

       In the same 24-hour span, the country recorded 26,856 new cases of Covid-19.

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

       “Another 81 cases were classified as Category 3, 57 were in Category 4 and 50 in Category 5,” he said in his daily Covid-19 statement yesterday.

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

       There are 368 patients in intensive care units (ICU), of which 223 require ventilator support.

       The country’s Covid-19 infectivity rate remains at an Rt level of 1.05.

       Dr Noor Hisham said there were 1,869 Covid-19 hospitalised patients on Monday, of which 1,144 (61%) were Category 1 and 2 cases.

       Another 725 were Category 3, 4 and 5 cases.

       “Some Covid-19 cases that are Category 1 and 2 are deemed high risk and require admission to low risk quarantine centres 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.

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

       Dr Noor Hisham said there were seven states where the ICU bed utilisation rate was more than 50%.

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

       The ministry also detected eight new Covid-19 clusters, taking the number of active clusters to 445.