The Malaysian Insight

COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admissions climbed from 1,062 to 1,096 in the past 24 hours, health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said today.

He said that of this figure, 545 of them needed respiratory support.

Meanwhile, the country reported 160 deaths today, bringing the cumulative death toll to 10,179.

The deaths today involved 51 cases in Selangor, 32 in Johor, 22 in Kedah, 17 in Kuala Lumpur, 14 in Negeri Sembilan, six in Pahang, five in Sabah, four in Melaka and Terengganu, three in Perak, as well as two in Penang.

Of the total, 24 were dead on arrival (DOA). Earlier today, the deputy director-general of public Health Dr Chong Chee Keong said the ministry is seeing up to 100 DOA cases of coronavirus a week.

He said such cases have been rising consistently over the last few weeks and that 80% of those DOA were never diagnosed.

“In other words, there is a group of people who either have no access to diagnosis or for reasons of their own, they are not coming forward to get tested,” said Chong, who leads the greater Klang Valley Covid-19 task force.

He said a sizable proportion of the dead-on-arrival cases were foreigners.

He said the remaining 20% of the dead victims who knew they had Covid-19 had either sought treatment late or did not seek treatment at all.

Malaysia logged 20,889 Covid-19 cases today.

Of this, Noor Hisham said only 1.3% or 273 were of category 3 (pneumonia), 4 (pneumonia and require oxygen support) and 5 (critical stage).

Meanwhile, as many as 20,616 were of category 1 (asymptomatic) and category 2 (mild symptoms).

Noor Hisham said 4,292 of today’s cases had been vaccinated against Covid-19, meaning they contracted the virus after immunisation.

As for the infection rate, the country’s current infection rate (Rt) stood at 1.08.

“The states that recorded the highest Rt value were Kelantan (1.39), Pulau Pinang (1.21) followed by Perak (1.23).

Noor Hisham said the rise in Covid-19 cases in Malaysia is in line with the global situation.

He said the highest 7-day average case rate between 31 July and 6 August per 100,000 population is recorded in Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur (105.7) followed by Selangor (101.5), Wilayah Persekutuan Putrajaya (75.6), Negeri Sembilan (71.7), Melaka (53.8) and Kedah (51.8).

He said these figures indicate that Covid-19 infections have spread within communities. – August 6, 2021.