KUALA LUMPUR: The Covid-19 death rate increased by 5.2 per cent in Epidemiological Week (EW) 43 compared to the previous week, Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said.
In a statement today, he said a total of 522 fatalities were reported in EW43, between Oct 24 and Oct 30, compared to 496 deaths in EW42.
"The current fatality rate is at 1.1 per cent and all-time fatality rate is 1.2 per cent. Sarawak has the highest death per one million people, followed by Perlis and Penang."
Dr Noor Hisham said other main indicators, such as new cases, average active cases, and intensive care unit (ICU) admissions were however on the downward trend.
"A total of 41,508 new cases were registered in EW42 and 40,613 were reported in EW43. This is a 2.2 per cent reduction.
"Kelantan, Putrajaya and Melaka are in the top three in terms of cases per 10,000 people.
"Average active cases had also reduced by 15 per cent from 83,605 in EW42 to 70,829 in EW43, cumulative active cases have been gradually declining since eight weeks ago," he said.
Cases requiring ICU treatment stood at 505 in EW43, a 12 per cent reduction from the 571 cases in EW42.
Dr Noor Hisham added that cases requiring ventilator support had reduced by 14.4 per cent; from 250 cases (EW42) to 214 (EW43).
"Malaysia's infectivity rate (Rt) was at 0.96 on Oct 30, the number has been on the rise again since Oct 23.
"An Rt above 1.0 indicates the possibility of a new Covid-19 wave, like what had happened in the beginning of the third wave," he said.
The number of new clusters identified in EW43 had also reduced compared to EW42. A total of 56 clusters were detected in EW42 while 46 were recorded in EW43.
The total number of active clusters had also declined from 557 in EW42, to 438 in EW43.
"Workplace clusters form the majority of the clusters at 54.3 per cent (25 clusters), followed by educational clusters (nine), community clusters (seven) and high-risk group clusters (five).
"Educational clusters were on the rise after physical teaching sessions allowed at higher educational institutions starting EW 41," said Dr Noor Hisham.
On vaccinations, he said, as of Oct 30, 25,229,758 had registered for Covid-19 vaccination.
"A total of 74.9 per cent of the total population had completed both doses of their vaccine where 95.5 per cent of the adults have been fully vaccinated, while 66.4 per cent of the adolescents, aged 12 to 17, have been fully vaccinated."
To date, Health Ministry had allocated 26,522 beds at the Covid-19 quarantine and treatment centres (PKRC), 14,963 normal beds, 1,345 ICU beds and 2,804 ventilators for Covid-19 cases.
"Hospital beds and ICU beds utilisation rate has showed a downward trend between two and six percent comparing EW42 and EW43.
"A total of 6,049 hospital beds (40 per cent) are used, 9,605 beds (36 per cent) in the PKRC are occupied, 579 ICU beds (43 per cent) are utilised while the utilisation rate of ventilators is at 40 per cent (1,124 units used)."