KUALA LUMPUR, July 25 — The number of new Covid-19 cases in Malaysia has shown an increase of 13.5 per cent to 29,886 in the 29th epidemiological week (ME 29/2022) from July 17 to 23, from 26,335 in the previous week.

Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said of the total, local cases had also increased by 13.5 per cent from 26,317 cases to 29,858 cases, while the number of imported cases dropped 26.3 per cent from 38 cases to only 28.

"The number of recovered cases in ME 29 also increased by 18.9 per cent from 19,138 to 22,757 cases,” he said in a statement here today.

According to Dr Noor Hisham, the number of deaths in ME 29 also showed an increase of 61.5 per cent, recording 63 cases from only 39 in the previous week.

He said the admission of Covid-19 patients into public hospitals per 100,000 population had increased by 18.3 per cent, with the number of patients in categories 1 and 2 showing an increase of 12.5 per cent, while the number of those in categories 3, 4 and 5, increased by 25 per cent.

Apart from that, Dr Noor Hisham said that the trend of daily Covid-19 active cases monitored virtually by the Covid-19 Assessment Centre (CAC) has dropped 1.7 per cent at the end of ME 29 to 70,140 cases from 71,326 cases previously.

He said there were currently 15 active Covid-19 clusters in the country with the national RT value being static at 1.10 during the ME 29.

Meanwhile, he said the influenza-like illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) surveillance, positive ILI sample rates for Covid-19 in the ME 19 had dropped 0.9 per cent.

"The positive ILI sample rates for Covid-19 had dropped to 11.4 per cent from 11.5 per cent in the ME 29, while the positive rate of the SARI samples remained at zero,” he said. — Bernama