KUALA LUMPUR, July 16 — Malaysia today recorded three new Covid-19 cases, bringing the total number of infections to 8,737.

Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said one case involving a local was imported while the other two were foreigners.

"One of the foreigners was found positive while attempting to move him from the Jalan Duta Immigration Depot to another place while the other foreigner was in Sarawak and detected after compulsory screenings at his workplace,” said Dr Noor Hisham.

He said no new deaths were recorded today.

He also said the Ministry of Health is also now moving more towards surveilling the activities of high risk groups like the elderly, children and the sickly.

Dr Noor Hisham said since the number of cases has reduced, the way to contain the virus would be to focus on targeting specific areas where cases have emerged as well as areas that had the enhanced movement control order placed upon them.

He said 454 markets throughout the country have been screened for Covid-19. From there, 34,834 samples were taken where 276 came back positive for Covid-19.

He added that 432 homes for the elderly have been screened, 30 were found positive; of that figure, five cases displayed symptoms while the remaining 25 were asymptomatic.

In today’s announcement, Dr Noor Hisham said cases involving overseas returnees increased by one to 683. 

The patient in question was a Malaysian engineer working in Nigeria and was confirmed Covid-19 positive upon returning here.

As for migrants, 2,605 have returned positive for Covid-19 out of 65,066 tests to date. Two of the migrants are still in the intensive care unit, but 2,570 have recovered. Up till today, five deaths have been recorded from this community.

At the Bukit Jalil Immigration Depot, 1,661 individuals have been screened for Covid-19 and 649 found positive.

The Sepang depot screened 1,447 and found 72 positive. 

The Semenyih depot screened 1,785 of which 66 came back positive while the Putrajaya depot has only two positive cases out of 101 individuals screened.