KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 14): Malaysia's Covid-19 cases rose to 8,084 on Thursday (Oct 14) from 7,950 a day earlier, the Health Ministry said.
Of the latest infections, only 133 or 1.6% were serious, involving those in Categories 3 (patients with pneumonia), 4 (patients with pneumonia requiring oxygen therapy) and 5 (critical patients requiring assisted ventilation).
The remaining 7,951 cases or 98.4% involved people who showed no symptoms or mild symptoms (Categories 1 and 2).
There were 702 patients in intensive care units as of noon on Thursday, of whom 683 were confirmed to be Covid-19 positive and 19 others were suspected to be infected, said Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.
Of those in intensive care, 367 required ventilators to breathe, he added.
Daily recoveries climb to 12,456
Meanwhile, daily recoveries continue to come in higher than new infections at 12,456.
A total of 2,240,345 recoveries have been recorded since the pandemic began, from a total of 2,369,613 infections detected, translating to a recovery rate of 94.5%.
The Health Ministry also announced 17 new clusters, including nine workplace clusters. The rest were communities, high-risk and private educational institutions clusters.
A total of 5,641 clusters have been reported across the country so far, including 4,897 that have been declared ended, leaving 744 active clusters
Upgrading of clinical assessment centre
Separately, in preparation for the endemic phase, the Ministry is upgrading the services of the Covid-19 clinical assessment centre (CAC).
This upgrade process will involve several new functions that will be implemented in stages. This is to expand the accessibility of CACs to more Covid-19 patients and those suspected of being infected with the virus, Dr Noor Hisham said.
“Among the initiatives taken are improved assessment of Covid-19 cases in primary healthcare facilities, encouraging the involvement of private medical practitioners in providing alternative CAC GP and CAC services, expansion of virtual CACs nationwide and automated voice recording service (robocall).
“It is hoped that with the improvement of this CAC service, the monitoring service at the residence of Covid-19 patients (home monitoring) will be better, and further reduce the death rate, especially brought-in-dead cases,” he said.