GEORGE TOWN, June 27 — Penang chief minister Chow Kon Yeow today said that there is a slight increase in Covid-19 cases in Penang with 44 people hospitalised last week.
He said the state saw a 6.4 per cent increase in cases from a cumulative 1,007 cases in Epidemiology Week week 24 to 1,072 cases in week 25. (An epi or epidemiological week is a standardised method of counting weeks to allow for the comparison of data year after year.) Epi week 24 is between June 12 and 18 while epi week 25 is between June 19 and 25.
“We recorded 173 cases on June 25,” he told a press conference in Komtar after announcing a “first responder” initiative under the Love Penang campaign.
He said a total of 12 Covid-19 cases were admitted into the hospital on June 26.
“We have been seeing zero hospitalisation at one point since the reopening of borders and transition to endemic phase but there are now cases needing treatment in hospitals,” he said.
He said it is an indication that the public needs to be more careful and continue to be mindful when in public spaces.
Prior to last week, Chow said Covid-19 cases reported were below 120 daily, sometimes even below 80 cases.
Over the last week, according to CovidNow, the cases hovered between 140 and 200 cases daily where a total of 203 cases were recorded in June 23 and 179 cases were recorded on June 26.
Despite the increase in cases, Chow said there were no new clusters reported.
“As of now, we do not have any active clusters and even with more new cases daily, it is spread out all over the state so there were no clusters,” he said.
He added that the state’s Covid-19 Low-Risk Treatment and Quarantine Centres (PKRC) were already closed.
“We hope the state health department can make plans to prepare in case we need to reopen PKRCs,” he said.
Chow said no deaths were recorded thus far.
“There is no need to panic due to this as everything is still under control,” he assured the public.
He reminded the public to maintain the SOPs of wearing masks indoors as a preventive measure.
