COVID-19 | The Health Ministry reported 6,377 new Covid-19 cases today, bringing the cumulative infections to 2,454,749.

The new cases were surpassed by a total of 6,637 Covid-19 patients who recovered today. This is expected to help reduce the number of active cases.

Nationally, the number of hospital admissions in the last seven days have declined by 17.0 percent compared to the preceding week.

However, hospital admissions in some states are on the rise, particularly in Terengganu (+82.6 percent), Pahang (+33.2 percent) and Kedah (+22.9 percent).

• Patients in ICU: 564
• Intubated: 294

Beginning Oct 9, the Health Ministry will only publish the latest breakdown of new cases by states after midnight on its CovidNow portal.

The breakdown by states for yesterday (Oct 27), where 6,148 new cases were reported, is as follows:

Selangor (1,222)
Sarawak (780)
Kelantan (612)
Sabah (585)
Johor (555)
Kedah (496)
Pahang (365)
Penang (325)
Terengganu (290)
Kuala Lumpur (273)
Perak (251)
Negeri Sembilan (176)
Malacca (156)
Perlis (42)
Putrajaya (14)
Labuan (6)

Genomic surveillance

Based on the Health Ministry’s genomic surveillance conducted from Oct 20 up to today, a total of 259 samples from Covid-19 patients have been sequenced.

All 259 turned out to be Covid-19 variants of concern – 257 of them were the highly infectious Delta variant, and two were the more vaccine-resistant but less infectious Beta variant.

This shows that the Delta variant remains the dominant variant in Malaysia, after outpacing the previously prevalent Beta variant since June.

The sequencing was carried out by a consortium of five research institutes, namely the Institue for Medical Research (IMR), Universiti Malaya’s medical faculty (FOM-UM) and its Tropical Infectious Diseases Research & Education Centre (Tidrec), UiTM’s Integrative Pharmacogenomics Institute (iPromise UiTM), and the Malaysia Genome Institute (MGI).

Clusters

To date, 474 Covid-19 clusters are still active, including eight new ones.

The ongoing clusters have fallen by 19.8 percent from the 591 active clusters a week ago.

The eight new clusters comprised five workplace clusters (62.5 percent), one high-risk group cluster (12.5 percent), one community cluster (12.5 percent) and one Education Ministry institution cluster (12.5 percent).

Industri Jalan Kemajuan Bangi 2
Category: Workplace
States: Selangor
District(s): Hulu Langat
Initial tests: 29 out of 44 infected (65.9 percent)

Industri Jalan Telok Mengkuang
Category: Workplace
States: Selangor
District(s): Kuala Langat
Initial tests: 15 out of 200 infected (7.5 percent)

Jalan Besi
Category: Workplace
States: Kuala Lumpur
District(s): Lembah Pantai
Initial tests: 8 out of 21 infected (38.1 percent)

Paya Pasir
Category: Workplace
States: Pahang
District(s): Maran
Initial tests: 15 out of 66 infected (22.7 percent)

Industri Banang Jaya
Category: Workplace
States: Johor
District(s): Batu Pahat
Initial tests: 18 out of 67 infected (26.9 percent)

Jalan Batu Gantung
Category: High-risk group
States: Penang
District(s): Timur Laut
Initial tests: 42 out of 57 infected (73.7 percent)

Jalan Marsom
Category: Community
States: Selangor
District(s): Sabak Bernam
Initial tests: 10 out of 22 infected (45.5 percent)

Merinding 2
Category: Education Ministry institution
States: Labuan
District(s): Labuan
Initial tests: 11 out of 498 infected (2.2 percent)

Source:Malaysiakini

COVID-19 | The Health Ministry’s Github data repository reported a total of 98 Covid-19 fatalities yesterday (Oct 27), bringing the cumulative death toll to 28,674.

Malaysia has the highest number of deaths per capita in Asean as well as East Asia with 871 deaths per million population.

From the newly reported deaths yesterday, 32.7 percent or 32 died before they could receive treatment at a hospital.

Sarawak recorded the highest number of new deaths at 29, making up 29.6 percent of the newly reported fatalities.

The remaining deaths were in Perak (11), Kelantan (10), Johor (9), Sabah (9), Kuala Lumpur (6), Malacca (5), Kedah (4), Pahang (4), Negeri Sembilan (3), Penang (3), Terengganu (3), Perlis (1) and Selangor (1).

No new deaths were reported in Labuan and Putrajaya.

A total of 80 out of the 98 reported deaths or 81.6 percent happened in the last seven days.

The remaining deaths happened more than a week ago but were only recorded yesterday due to delays in data reporting.

An average of 99 Covid-19 deaths were reported daily in the last 30 days compared to the seven-day average of 77, indicating a downward trend.

To date, 2,466 Covid-19 deaths have been reported this month.

A total of 9,680 Covid-19 deaths were reported in September, 7,642 in August, 3,858 in July and 2,380 in June.

As of yesterday, there were 71,713 active Covid-19 cases. This is a reduction of 13.8 percent from the 83,223 active infections a week ago.

Compared to 30 days ago, the number of active cases has fallen by 59.6 percent from 177,561.

Cluster-linked infections

The Health Ministry’s post-midnight update also provided further insights into the new Covid-19 infections yesterday.

From the 6,148 new cases yesterday, a total of 200 of them could be traced to ongoing Covid-19 clusters.

From the cluster-linked cases, 148 (74 percent) were from workplaces while 30 (15 percent) were from community transmissions.

Another 14 (7 percent) were from clusters linked to education institutions.

The remaining cases were traced to clusters related to religious events (5 – 2.5 percent) and high-risk groups such as old folks homes (3 – 1.5 percent).

Previously, the Health Ministry released deaths statistics together with the number of new Covid-19 cases in the evening. This had since changed.

Deaths statistics are now released after midnight along with other more detailed data. Malaysiakini reports them in the morning.

Source:Malaysiakini