KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 1 — The number of new COVID-19 infections recorded in the 30th epidemiological week (ME 30/2022), from July 24 to 30, dropped by 5.2 per cent to 28,339 cases from 29,886 cases in the previous week.
Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said local infections showed a 5.3 per cent drop from 29,858 cases in ME 29 to 28,286 in ME 30, while the number of imported cases jumped by 89.3 per cent from 28 cases to 53 cases during the period.
“The number of recovered cases in ME 30 also increased by 35.4 per cent from 22,757 to 30,823 cases,” he said in a statement today.
According to Dr Noor Hisham, the number of deaths in ME 30 decreased by 28.6 per cent to 49 cases, compared to 63 cases in ME 29.
He said that from Jan 25, 2020 (ME 4/2020) to July 30, 2022, the cumulative number of COVID-19 cases nationwide stood at 4,677,270; cumulative deaths were 35,960 cases, while cumulative clusters were 7,038, with 19 of them active.
Dr Noor Hisham said that overall, there were no changes in the admission of COVID-19 patients into health facilities, namely public hospitals and COVID-19 Quarantine and Treatment Centres (PKRCs), per 100,000 population in ME 30 compared with ME 29.
However, there was a 2.8 per cent increase in the number of COVID-19 patient admissions to public hospitals per 100,000 population, with categories one and two patients rising by 5.6 per cent, while there were no changes for patients in categories three, four and five.
He also said that the percentage of COVID-19 bed occupancy in ME 30, namely for non-critical beds, intensive care unit beds and PKRCs, remained at 23 per cent, 14 per cent and seven per cent, respectively.
Dr Noor Hisham added that positive COVID-19 cases monitored by the COVID-19 Assessment Centres (CAC) nationwide had still shown an increase, based on a comparison of physical CAC data reported on ME 29 and ME 30.
“The number of patient visits to CAC increased by 3.2 per cent; the number of new COVID-19 cases undergoing home monitoring dropped by 0.5 per cent and the number of COVID-19 cases referred by CAC to PKRC and hospitals decreased by 19.9 per cent,” he said.
On influenza-like-illness (ILI) and severe acute respiratory infection (SARI) surveillance, he said that 107 ILI samples tested positive for COVID-19 with a positive rate of 14.5 per cent, while the positive rate of SARI samples remained at zero per cent.
