KUALA LUMPUR, July 23 — Malaysia recorded nine new Covid-19 cases as of noon today, bringing the number of active cases in the country to 143, said Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

He said that three of the nine new cases are imported cases from Singapore, India and the Philippines respectively.

Of the local cases, four are Malaysians in Sarawak while two are non-Malaysians in Sabah and Kelantan.

"As for cases of domestic infections among non-citizens, two cases are as follows: In Sabah, one is a screening case before release from prison; while in Kelantan, it involves one case of a prison detainee before being transferred to the Immigration Detention Depot (DTI).

"This brings the number of Covid-19 cases in Malaysia to 8,840 cases. Therefore, the total number of active cases with possible infectivity is 143 cases,” he said during the Ministry of Health (MOH) press conference today.

Dr Noor Hisham also said that there were no new deaths and eight Covid-19 patients were discharged today.

However, he said that the Covid-19 "R-naught” — the reproductive number is an indicator of how contagious a disease is, or how easily it spreads from person to person — has increased from 0.3 during the movement control order (MCO) period in June to 1.36 currently.

"If the R-naught increases, it means more people will be infected. Today, our R-naught number is 1.36. If it increases to 1.6, we will have a sudden spike in infections,” he said.

There are currently 19 active clusters in the country, with four clusters, including the Stutong and Sentosa clusters in Sarawak, recording almost daily infections this week.

On July 1, 8 and 9, Malaysia recorded zero local transmissions of Covid-19.