KUALA LUMPUR, July 22 — Malaysia recorded 13,034 new Covid-19 cases within the last 24 hours, Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah tweeted.

This is the second highest daily recorded cases ever.

The majority of new infections are still from Selangor at 6,049 cases, followed by Kuala Lumpur (1,611).

This is the second time Malaysia has crossed the 13,000 mark in a single day. 

The first time was July 15 when the Health Ministry logged 13,215 cases.

The country’s cumulative Covid-19 cases is now 964,918.

Of today’s new cases, 13,009 are local transmission while 25 are from abroad and involve 19 citizens and six non-Malaysians.

In a subsequent statement, Dr Noor Hisham said only 1.6 per cent of today’s cases were considered severe, in Categories 3 to 5, and require hospitalisation. And of these, 72 people had lung inflammation and needed oxygen (Category 4) while 13 were critical and needed to be intubated (Category 5).

The bulk of positives were those who were either asymptomatic (Category 1) or very mild symptoms (Category 2). These latter two categories collectively formed 98.4 per cent.

"This is based on their current clinical condition of newly diagnosed Covid-19. Some of them remain in the same category throughout the period of infection, however some also changed their health status either improving to a lower category or declining to a higher category,” Dr Noor Hisham said.

Today, 134 people died of Covid-19. Of these, 39 were in Selangor, 32 in Kuala Lumpur, and 18 in Negri Sembilan.

Johor had 15 deaths. Perak and Melaka had seven each while Pahang had five. Kedah had four.

Penang and Terengganu had two deaths each while Labuan and Sabah had one each.

The majority of those who died were men at 81 compared to 53 women. A total of 119 were Malaysians.

The Health Ministry logged 112 deaths in hospital while 22 people were brought in dead.

A total of 8,436 patients survived and were discharged today.

Malaysia’s recovery record now stands at 815,293 cases or 84.5 percent of the total Covid-19 cases.

Currently, there are 142,051 active cases in the country and 938 are in the intensive care unit, of which 459 require breathing aid.