Covid-19 (April 20): 6,968 new cases, 16 deaths

COVID-19 | The Health Ministry said 6,968 new Covid-19 cases were reported yesterday, bringing the total cumulative infections to 4,409,202.

Active cases stood at 90,725, down 42.4 percent compared to 14 days ago. The R-number for the country as of yesterday was 0.84.

New cases according to states are as follows:

Selangor (4,651)
Kuala Lumpur (458)
Negeri Sembilan (379)
Perak (310)
Penang (204)
Johor (186)
Malacca (186)
Kedah (143)
Sarawak (139)
Sabah (83)
Pahang (67)
Putrajaya (51)
Terengganu (50)
Kelantan (42)
Perlis (13)
Labuan (6)

Another 16 deaths attributed to Covid-19 were reported yesterday, of which eight were declared as "brought in dead".

Over the past week, an average of 14.6 people were reported to have died of Covid-19, while the average for the past 30 days was 33.4, indicating that Covid-19 deaths are on the downtrend.

Since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, a total of 35,465 deaths have been attributed to Covid-19.

There have been 482 reported Covid-19 deaths this month. For comparison, there were 2,235 deaths last month and 770 in February.

Malaysia has the highest number of deaths per capita in the Asean and East Asian regions with 1,071 deaths per 1 million population, and the fourth-worst in Asia after Iran, Lebanon and Jordan – all in the Middle East.

The highest number of deaths was reported in Penang (4) followed by Kedah (3), Perak (3), Johor (2), Selangor (2), Sabah (1) and Kuala Lumpur (1).

There are 1,955 Covid-19 patients who are hospitalised of which 97 are in intensive care.

The highest number of admissions yesterday was recorded in Selangor (197) followed by Johor (141) and Sabah (79).