PUTRAJAYA: The number of Covid-19 recoveries outnumbered new cases for the first time in nearly two months, with 19,053 people allowed to be discharged yesterday.

       The last time this happened was on June 25 when there were 5,812 new cases and 6,775 recoveries.

       Yesterday’s figures saw the country’s active cases going down slightly to 260,700 from 262,255 the previous day.

       The daily Covid-19 cases also dipped below the 18,000-mark for the first time since Aug 9 with 17,672 new infections.

       Cases in the Klang Valley have shown a reduction with Selangor having 4,316 infections and Kuala Lumpur recording 891 while Sabah had 2,474 cases.

       In his daily Covid-19 statement, Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah (pic) said 97.5% of the latest infections were either mild or asymptomatic cases.

       The remaining 2.5% (436 cases) are those in Categories 3, 4 and 5 that require hospitalisation.

       Dr Noor Hisham said 81.13% or 14,337 of the new cases involved those who were either not vaccinated or not fully immunised.

       Cumulatively, Malaysia has had 1,572,765 Covid-19 cases since the pandemic began.

       In terms of the weekly average, Selangor has the highest with 6,180 cases, followed by Sabah (2,489 cases) and Kedah (1,838).

       Labuan has the lowest weekly average at five cases.

       The country’s average rate of Covid-19 cases in the past seven days is 61.12 per 100,000 population.

       The national infectivity rate stood at 1.03 as at Aug 22. Sarawak had the country’s highest at 1.29, followed by Perlis (1.24) and Sabah (1.21).

       The Health Ministry also detected 30 new Covid-19 clusters across the country. Of this, 18 involved workplace clusters with 792 confirmed cases.

       There are 10 clusters linked to community outbreaks with 175 cases.

       Dr Noor Hisham said the emergence of the highly infectious Delta variant might make it harder to reach herd immunity.

       “If the Covid-19 virus is constantly mutating, then it is difficult to achieve herd immunity.

       “If the infectivity level continues to rise, the vaccination threshold will need to be revised to over 90% of the adult population,” he said in an exchange with a Twitter user.

       To date, 78% of the Malaysian adult population have received at least one dose while 55.6% are fully vaccinated.