Covid-19: Malaysia's positive cases went over 500,000 mark

Health DG expresses his concern over the sudden spike of Covid-19 infections.

Kuala Lumpur, 22 May 2021 - On Saturday, the country’s cumulative Covid-19 cases had breached the half-a-million mark - inducing concerns from multiple parties.

Health DG, Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said that another 6,317 cases were reported, bringing the total cumulative cases to 505,115 since the first case in the country was reported on 25 of January last year.

Selangor recorded the highest number of cases with 1,647 followed by Sarawak (749), Kuala Lumpur (654), Kelantan (613), Johor (477) and Penang (359).

The number of recoveries is lower than new cases, with 4,694 patients being discharged in the past 24 hours.

In total, 449,234 patients or 88.9% have recovered from Covid-19 in the country with active cases now up to 53,682 cases.

There are 650 patients in intensive care units, with 370 of them requiring ventilator support.

Dr Noor Hisham also said that another 50 people died of the virus, with the death toll at 2,199 people or 0.44% of all cases.

There were another 17 new clusters reported on Saturday, bringing the total to 2,001 clusters.

There are 535 active clusters, while 1,466 clusters are declared to have ended.