KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia registered over 4,000 new Covid-19 cases for the second consecutive day at 4,362 today.
This is a slight increase from the 4,262 cases logged on Thursday.
Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the fresh infections today takes the national tally of the coronavirus to 2,711,764 infections since the pandemic struck the nation last year.
"Of the new cases today, 4,334 (4,099 Malaysians and 235 foreigners) were local infections, while the remaining 28 cases were imported (13 Malaysians and 15 foreigners)," he said in a statement today.
He said that out of the 4,362 cases reported, only 89 cases or two per cent were in Categories 3, 4, and 5.
The remaining 4,273 (98 per cent), he said were asymptomatic or mild symptoms under Categories 1 and 2.
"To date, 400 patients were being treated at the intensive care units, including 198 of them who are on ventilator support.
"A total of 5,098 patients have recovered, raising the cumulative number of recoveries to 2,625,245 as of today."
Meanwhile, Dr Noor Hisham said the nation's R-naught (Rt) stood at 0.90 as of Dec 16.
He said Negri Sembilan registered the highest Rt of 1.02, followed by Pahang (1.0) and Penang (1.00).
"States with Rt below 1 are Terengganu (0.99), Perak (0.98), Labuan (0.98), Kuala Lumpur (0.97), Melaka (0.96), Johor (0.96), Selangor (0.95), Perlis (0.93), Kedah (0.93), Putrajaya (0.86), Kelantan (0.86), Sabah (0.83), and Sarawak (0.75)."
Rt refers to the infectivity rate of a virus and the ability of a positive patient to transmit it to others.
If the Rt value is 1.5, it means a positive patient would be able to infect one or two other people.
On new clusters, Dr Noor Hisham said another 12 clusters were identified today.
Currently, he said there are 257 active clusters nationwide of the total 5,817 clusters recorded to date.
Dr Noor Hisham added that detailed information and breakdown of cases will be uploaded to the ministry's CovidNow portal at (https://covidnow.moh.gov.my/) https://covidnow.moh.gov.my (https://covidnow.moh.gov.my/), with the data being updated at midnight daily.