KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 15 — The number of new Covid-19 infections dropped slightly today to 20,546 new cases detected over the last day, said Health Ministry director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

A tweet by Dr Noor Hisham detailed how Selangor reported more than a third of the new infections with 7,307 new cases, followed by Sabah with 1,665 new infections and Kedah rounding up the top three states with 1,596 new cases.

He said Johor registered 1,508 new infections, Kuala Lumpur with 1,442 new cases, Penang with 1,111 fresh cases, Perak with 1,069 cases and Kelantan with 1,025 infections, rounding up the states with new infections upward of 1,000.

Cumulatively, Malaysia has detected 1,404,899 Covid-19 infections to date.

In a later update, the Health Ministry disclosed that another 282 Covid-19 patients have died, pushing the country’s death toll to 12,510.

This meant that 3,486 people have died from Covid-19 in the month to date and that over 27 per cent of all Covid-19 deaths since the pandemic began were in this August that was only at its halfway point today.

Patients in intensive care units (ICU) nationwide remained near the maximum recorded, at 1,059 people including 526 who required ventilators.

Full recoveries lagged the number of new cases reported again, with 16,945 patients discharged to give the country an active case total of 247,261.