KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 10 — Malaysia reported another 5,058 Covid-19 cases in the country today.

This is the third consecutive day that Malaysia has reported over 5,000 cases in a day.

As of today, the total number of Covid-19 cases recorded in the country was 2,683,523.

Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said in a statement that out of the 5,058 new cases today, only 80 or 1.6 per cent were in Category 3, 4 and 5, which require hospitalisation.

The remaining 4,978 or 98.4 per cent are in Category 1 and 2, which require only quarantine.

As for those being treated in intensive care units (ICU), Dr Noor Hisham said that there are currently 393 patients, with 353 of them confirmed for Covid-19 and the remaining 40 are suspected, probable or under investigation for Covid-19.

"Of the 393 patients, 212 of them currently need ventilators to help them breathe, with 151 of them Covid-19 positive and 61 are suspected, probable or under investigation for the deadly disease,” he said.

Dr Noor Hisham added that seven new Covid-19 clusters were also detected in the country over the past 24 hours.

This brings the number of active clusters in the country to 250.

On a brighter note, 4,997 people have recovered from Covid-19, bringing the total number of recovered cases to 2,591,819.

"Malaysia’s national rate of infections currently stands at 0.97,” said Dr Noor Hisham, adding that Perlis, Negri Sembilan and Melaka are the states with the highest infectivity rate at the moment, at 1.04, 1.03 and 1.03 respectively.