PUTRAJAYA: After five days in a row of over 20,000 new cases, Malaysia’s Covid-19 daily numbers dipped slightly to 19,740 infections yesterday.

       It was also the fourth day of cases on a decreasing trend since recording an all-time high of 21,668 infections on Aug 12.

       In a statement, Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said 98.5% of yesterday’s total, or 19,442 cases, were either mild or asymptomatic.

       The remaining 1.5% (298 cases) are those in Categories Three, Four and Five.

       Dr Noor Hisham said 85.13% of yesterday’s cases involved individuals who had not completed their vaccination. Fifty-two per cent were detected from contact tracing activities while another 35% are sporadic infections. A total of 11% are cases with links to clusters and there were also 19 imported cases.

       Nine states reported four-figure cases, with Selangor continuing to record the highest at 5,706 new infections.

       Both Sarawak and Melaka reported new daily records at 1,566 and 1,120 cases respectively.

       It is the first time Melaka has more than 1,000 cases in a day.

       Labuan, which has the country’s highest vaccination rate with 88.8% of its adult population already fully jabbed, continues to have the lowest number of cases with only two new infections.

       Dr Noor Hisham said as at Aug 15, the national infectivity rate or Rt was at 1.05.

       Perlis has the country’s highest infectivity rate at 1.29, followed by Kelantan (1.19) and Sabah (1.16).

       Dr Noor Hisham also announced 274 more Covid-19 fatalities, bringing Malaysia’s death toll up to 12,784.

       The latest included 63 foreigners. There are also 77 brought-in-dead (BID) cases, of which 49 were foreigners. Of the deaths, some 201 (73%) were people with some form of comorbidity.

       Selangor had the most number of deaths with 100 fatalities, followed by Kuala Lumpur with 39.

       Currently, there are 249,277 active Covid-19 cases nationwide, including 1,047 patients in intensive care units and 520 on ventilator support. There were also 17,450 recoveries.

       A total of 35 new Covid-19 clusters were found across the country, including 21 workplace-related clusters with at least 658 cases linked to them.

       There are also 11 community outbreaks resulting in 181 confirmed infections. Nationwide, there are 1,339 active clusters.