Healthcare workers perform intubation procedure on a Covid-19 patient in Hospital Serdang’s ICU. — Picture by Shafwan Zaidon
KUALA LUMPUR, March 3 — The Health Ministry recorded another 27,500 new Covid 19 cases and 115 deaths in the last 24 hours.
This brings the total number of cases recorded since the start of the pandemic to 3,496,090, and the death toll to 32,942.
According to the Health Ministry’s CovidNow website, of the 115 deaths reported, 36 were classified as brought-in-dead (BID).
Johor again recorded the most deaths with 25, followed by Sabah (24), Selangor (18), Kedah and Negri Sembilan (eight), Perak (seven), Pahang and Kuala Lumpur (six), Kelantan (four), Penang (three), Perlis and Melaka (three), Sarawak and Terengganu with one each.
In his latest statement, Health director-general Tan Sri Noor Hisham Abdullah said of today’s cases, 27,072 involved local infections while 428 involved imported cases.
The recovery rate yesterday also surpassed the number of new cases at 27,557, bringing the total recovery to 3,169,669 or 90.7 per cent.
There are currently 360 people in intensive care units (ICU), 194 of whom require respiratory assistance.
Of the new cases, 99.31 per cent are in Categories One and Two while 189 are in Categories Three Four and Five.
The Health Ministry also recorded nine new clusters, bringing the total active clusters to 475.
The country’s infectivity rate or R-naught stands at 1, which is lower than yesterday’s 1.02.
There were 1841 hospital admissions yesterday of which 677 cases or 36.8 per cent are from Categories three, four and five.
The remaining 1,164 cases or 63.2 per cent are from Categories one and two.
ICU beds in eight states have exceeded 50 per cent capacity, including Putrajaya (67 per cent) Perlis (64 per cent), Kelantan (60per cent), Johor (59 per cent), Kuala Lumpur (58 per cent), Sabah (55 per cent), Melaka (53 per cent) and Selangor (51 per cent).
Three regions are over their non-ICU bed capacity — Selangor at 113 per cent, Kuala Lumpur is at 106 per cent and Perak at 102 per cent.