Covid-19 (Jan 12): 3,198 cases, R-number rises to 1.00

COVID-19 | The Health Ministry reported 3,198 new Covid-19 cases today, bringing the cumulative infections to 2,795,233.

They were surpassed by a total of 3,200 Covid-19 patients who recovered today, but just barely. This is expected to help reduce the number of active cases.

The national Covid-19 R-number has been on an uptrend over the last few days, rising to 1.00 yesterday.

The last time the R-number was this high was on Nov 23 last year, when the number was on the downtrend and had since kept below the 1.00 threshold until now.

At the state level, several states and territories have R-numbers at or above 1.00, namely Labuan (1.12), Kuala Lumpur (1.08), Putrajaya (1.08), Sabah (1.07), Malacca (1.05), Negeri Sembilan (1.04), and Kedah (1.00).

An R-number above 1.00 - if sustained - would mean an exponential rise in the number of cases, while a number below that would indicate the outbreak is in decline. An R-number at exactly 1.00 means daily case numbers would not increase nor decrease.

• Patients in ICU: 215
• Intubated: 105

Those who require intubation have also declined by 23.4 percent from a week ago.

To date, 179 Covid-19 clusters are still active, including 8 new clusters reported today.

The ongoing clusters have fallen by 8.2 percent from the 195 active clusters a week ago.

The Health Ministry will only publish today's breakdown of new cases by states after midnight on its CovidNow portal.

The breakdown by states for yesterday (Jan 11), where 3,175 new cases were reported, is as follow:

Selangor (1,796)
Sarawak (1,339)
Kelantan (1,052)
Johor (864)
Sabah (705)
Terengganu (650)
Perak (643)
Penang (632)
Kedah (578)
Pahang (551)
Kuala Lumpur (313)
Malacca (244)
Negeri Sembilan (243)
Perlis (94)
Putrajaya (45)
Labuan (2)