PUTRAJAYA: Malaysia’s new daily Covid-19 cases stayed above the 20,000 mark with seven states reporting four-digit figures.

       In his daily updates, Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said there were 21,468 new cases, which brought the country’s total to 1,363,683.

       He said of the number, 96.9% were mild and asymptomatic infections.

       “Only 3.1%, or 670 cases, are those in Categories 3, 4 and 5.

       “New cases involving those who have not been vaccinated total 87.4%,” he said.

       Dr Noor Hisham said the seven states reporting four figure cases were Selangor (7,449 cases), Kuala Lumpur (2,183), Kedah (1,807), Sabah (1,654), Johor (1,485), Penang (1,316) and Kelantan (1,088).

       In terms of Covid-19 incidence rate, Malaysia’s seven-day average is 53.4 cases per 100,000 population. Kuala Lumpur has the highest incidence rate at 105.2 cases per 100,000 population.

       Dr Noor Hisham also said 25 of the new cases were imported and 21,443 were local transmissions where 10,834 were traced from close contacts while 8,753 were sporadic infections.

       “Another 1,856 cases are linked to clusters,” he said.

       A total of 277 fatalities were also reported yesterday, bringing the death toll to 11,968.

       Dr Noor Hisham said this included 96 “brought-in-dead” (BID) cases – a new daily record. He added that 65 of the BID cases were Malaysians and 31 were foreign nationals.

       He said Selangor reported 108 fatalities, of which 33 were BID cases while Kuala Lumpur had 66 deaths including 31 BID cases.

       “A total of 17,025 patients have been discharged, bringing the total number of recoveries to 1,110,528 or 81.44% of all cases.

       “Currently, there are 241,187 active cases. Of this, 1,075 are under intensive care and 537 in need of ventilator support,” he said.