Over the past four days, Malaysia has seen a sharp increase in COVID-19 cases with the Ministry of Health (MOH) recording over 20,000 new infections
On 29 January, the daily number of new COVID-19 cases identified throughout the country passed the 5,000 mark for the first time with 5,725 cases.
After that, the number continued to grow with 5,728 cases the next day. The country then saw a slight drop in the next two days after the number went down to 5,298 and 4,214 respectively.
In just four days between 29 January and 1 February, Malaysia saw a whopping 20,965 new cases.
As of 1 February, there are 48,074 active cases throughout the country.
The reported cases in the past four days make up 43% of that total.
Most new clusters identified over the past four days involved workplaces.
On 29 January, 12 new clusters were reported and 10 of them were workplace clusters. On 30 January, MOH identified 16 new clusters, of which 13 were detected at construction sites and factories. Meanwhile, on 31 January, seven out of 10 new clusters are from workplaces and on 1 February, nine out of 14 clusters were also identified at the workplace.
Therefore, 39 out of 52 recent clusters are workplace-related.
According to MOH, since the coronavirus disease was first identified in the country, Selangor has recorded the most number of cases at 69,296.
Meanwhile, this is followed by Sabah with 49,144 cases and Kuala Lumpur with 26,303 cases.
Amid the recent spike, Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah assured that the COVID-19 Pfizer vaccine will be landing in Malaysia by the end of February
The Edge Markets reported that he announced the news after participating in the COVID-19 Emergency Management Technical Committee meeting at the Chief Minister’s Office at Wisma Darul Iman, Kuala Terengganu.
He said that the first batch of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine is expected to arrive in Malaysia on 26 February and once arrived, it will be distributed in stages within a week or two.
Dr Noor Hisham also noted that a total of 141 volunteers had received injections in Phase 3 clinical trials of the COVID-19 vaccine developed and sponsored by China’s Institute of Medical Biology Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (IMBCAMS).
3,000 volunteers, aged 18 and above, were chosen to undergo the vaccination trial based on set criteria.
