PUTRAJAYA, Oct 20 (NNN-BERNAMA) — The number of new daily COVID-19 cases in Malaysia continues to hover in the 800s, with 862 cases reported today, taking the overall tally to 22,225 cases to date.
Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the latest development took the number of active cases with infectivity up to 7,681.
He said three deaths were also reported today – all of them in Sabah, bringing the cumulative number of deaths in Malaysia due to the pandemic, to 193.
In addition, he said another 634 cases had fully recovered today, bringing the total number of recoveries to 14,351 or 64.6 per cent of the total number of cases.
“The number of cases recovered in Sabah is 433, Kedah (109 cases), Selangor (77 cases), Federal Territory of Labuan (10 cases), Negeri Sembilan (two cases), Johor (one case), Pahang (one case) and Terengganu ( one case).
He said of the 862 new cases today, two were imported, one involving a Malaysian citizen from Egypt and the other a non-citizen from Indonesia.
Of the 860 local transmissions in the country, four cases comprised those returning from Sabah, bringing the total number of cases reported to have travel history to the state since Sept 20, to 452.
He said Sabah continued to record the highest number of cases at 673 (78.1 per cent) with more laboratory tests currently being conducted in the state.
The second most number of new cases were reported in Selangor with 132, followed by Kedah (17), Perak (nine), Penang (eight), Labuan (six), Negeri Sembilan (six), Kuala Lumpur (six), with Putrajaya, Johor, and Kelantan each having one case.
Dr Noor Hisham explained that 235 cases (27.3 per cent) of the cases reported today were from the Kepayan Prison and Tembok clusters, but all of them have been isolated and did not affect the community at large.
He added that there were 95 COVID-19 cases being treated in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) with 29 in need of respiratory assistance.
— NNN-BERNAMA