Covid-19 (Dec 31): 3,573 cases, R-number climbing

COVID-19 | The Health Ministry reported 3,573 new Covid-19 cases today amidst a growing R-number.

The R-number as of yesterday was 0.98, up from 0.88 on Dec 25. However, as long as the number if below 1.00, it suggests that the spread of Covid-19 is decelerating, just at a slower rate compared to a week ago.

The fresh infections were surpassed by a total of 3,988 Covid-19 patients who recovered today. This is expected to help reduce the number of active cases.

• Patients in ICU: 269
• Intubated: 163

As of today, the number of Covid-19 patients (including suspected ones) in the intensive care unit (ICU) is 20.6 percent lower compared to a week ago.

The number of hospital admissions of confirmed Covid-19 patients over the last seven days have declined by 6.2 percent compared to the preceding week.

However, bucking the national trend, hospital admissions of confirmed Covid-19 patients in Pahang (+20.9 percent) and Kelantan (+11.3 percent) rose during the same period.

The breakdown of new Covid-19 cases according to state will only be published after midnight. These are the figures for yesterday (Dec 30), where 3,997 new cases were reported:

Selangor (965)
Johor (433)
Kelantan (425)
Kedah (328)
Pahang (254)
Terengganu (243)
Kuala Lumpur (241)
Malacca (239)
Sabah (226)
Perak (209)
Penang (207)
Negeri Sembilan (161)
Putrajaya (25)
Sarawak (24)
Labuan (10)
Perlis (7)