KUALA LUMPUR: The country’s Covid-19 infectivity rate (Rt) dropped to 0.97 yesterday (Jan 5) from 0.99 on Tuesday.
Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah in a Tweet today said Sabah and Perlis reported an Rt value above 1.0 at 1.03 and 1.01, respectively.
Negri Sembilan and Kelantan recorded an Rt value of 0.99, followed by 0.98 in Kedah, Melaka, Labuan and Penang (0.97), Putrajaya and Johor (0.96), Pahang and Perak at 0.95, Selangor (0.94), Terengganu and Kuala Lumpur (0.93).
Only Sarawak recorded an Rt value under 0.90 at 0.86.
Meanwhile, Malaysia recorded the lowest number of Covid-19 deaths since Dec 17; with 18 fatalities reported yesterday.
According to the CovidNow portal, the new fatalities raised the death toll in the country to 31,609.
Of the new fatalities, three were brought-in-dead (BID) cases, with the current fatality rate at 0.8 per cent.
Three states reported the highest number of Covid-19 deaths with three cases each in Selangor, Pahang and Perak.
Kuala Lumpur, Kedah and Melaka reported two Covid-19 fatalities each followed by one death each in Kelantan, Sabah and Terengganu.
There were no new Covid-19 related deaths in Johor, Negri Sembilan, Perlis, Penang, Sarawak, Labuan and Putrajaya.
In the past two weeks, nine Covid-19 deaths were reported per million people in the country, with Terengganu continuing to record the highest fatality rate with 25 deaths per million.
Perak reported 17 deaths per million people, while Penang logged 13 deaths per million in the same time period.
Data also showed that in the past weeks, a majority of deaths involved those aged between 70 and 79 at 32.2 per cent. 22.2 per cent of deaths occurred among those aged 60 to 69 and 21.7 per cent involved those above 80 years old.
There has been a slight increase in fatalities among those aged 18 to 29 at a rate of 2.8 per cent in the past week, compared to 1.3 per cent two weeks ago.
To date, 137 Covid-19 patients require ventilation, with a utilisation rate of 37.3 per cent while 120 patients were admitted to the intensive care units.
Currently, there are 32,509 individuals observing home quarantine, while 3,399 are at Covid-19 quarantine and treatment centres.
The Health Ministry also reported 3,195 more recoveries, bringing the total of recoveries in Malaysia to 2,701,808.
There were 3,270 new Covid-19 cases yesterday with the cumulative number of cases now at 2,773,156.
On hospital bed utilisation, Melaka recorded the highest at 81.1 per cent followed by Kedah (79.5 per cent), Kelantan (79.1 per cent), Terengganu (77.3 per cent), Johor (74.1 per cent), and Negri Sembilan (73.6 per cent).
The overall intensive care unit (ICU) utilisation rate for Covid-19 cases in the country increased slightly to 56.5 per cent compared to 52.3 per cent on Jan 4.
The highest ICU utilisation rate was recorded in Putrajaya at 80 per cent, followed by Kuala Lumpur (79.6 per cent with 21 active cases), Terengganu (68.9 per cent and 25 active cases) and Selangor (67.3 per cent with 47 active cases).
To date, 21 per cent of the total population have received their booster shots, while 78.5 per cent of the total population have been fully vaccinated.
Source: New Straits Times
