KUALA LUMPUR: The Health Ministry today announced a new Covid-19 cluster detected in Tawar, Kedah.
This new cluster recorded nine cases, making up the bulk of 15 new Covid-19 cases today.
The index case of this cluster (case 9,113) is a Malaysian trader. He has a history of attending a wake for a family member on July 31 and Aug 1, in which some 30 people were in attendance.
He started exhibiting symptoms on Aug 8 and sought for medical treatment at a medical centre. A Covid-19 test was administered and the result came back positive two days later.
The Health Ministry said active case detection was activated and his close contacts were screened.
Until today, nine tested positive, 21 negative while 56 are still awaiting results.
All of the cases in this new cluster so far are related to the index case.
Meanwhile, of the 15 new cases, 11 are local transmissions and four are imported cases. Nine local transmissions belong to the Tawar cluster as stated above and two are in Kuala Lumpur, involving one local and one non-citizen.
The four imported cases are three Malaysians in Selangor who returned from Indonesia and one Malaysian in Kuala Lumpur who returned from Yemen.
This brings the total number of Covid-19 cases in Malaysia to 9,129.
Four more patients have recovered and discharged from hospitals, bringing the total of recoveries to 8,821.
Two are being treated at intensive care units (ICU) with none requiring breathing assistance.
No new fatalities were recorded keeping the death toll at 125.