Malaysia recorded 41 new Covid-19 cases today, primarily comprising foreigners under immigration detention and an existing cluster arising from a chicken factory in Pedas, Negeri Sembilan.

Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said of the 41 new cases, three were imported while 38 were local transmissions.

Noor Hisham told a press conference in Putrajaya today that 32 of the local transmission cases involved foreigners while six involved Malaysians.

For the 32 local transmissions involving foreigners, the largest group comprised of 15 cases from the Pedas cluster that originated from a chicken factory.

The next largest group comprised of 14 people at the Malaysian Immigration Academy, Port Dickson which housed detainees that were transferred from the Bukit Jalil detention centre following a Covid-19 outbreak.

The remaining cases of local transmissions involving foreigners consisted of three people from cleaning companies.

As for local transmissions involving Malaysians, they comprised two cases in Selangor, two in Malacca, one in Negeri Sembilan, and one in Sabah.

The Selangor cases involved an individual detected at a Kuala Selangor old folks home and another was a close contact of Patient 8,294.

The Malacca case involved a close-contact of Patient 7,817 and another from screening at a religious school.

The Negeri Sembilan case also involved a religious school while the Sabah case was a close contact of Patient 8,403 who was also the 119th Covid-19 death.

The new infections put the cumulative cases at 8,494. No new death was reported today, maintaining the death toll at 121 people, or 1.42 percent of total cases.

Noor Hisham also reported that 54 Covid-19 patients have been discharged, which brought the total recoveries to 7,400 or 87.1 percent of total cases.

He added that 973 patients were still under treatment, of which four were in the intensive care unit.

MySejahtera App

Noor Hisham has encouraged Malaysians to download the MySejahtera App, a contact-tracing app for Covid-19.

He said eight weeks since its launch, the app now had 3,692,287 registered users.

He said the app had a hotspot tracker, self-evaluation functions, as well as Covid-19 statistics. He said a "check-in" function was also added on June 1.

With the app, users could "check-in" at places they visited instead of filling-in their details using pen and paper.

As a precaution and to facilitate contact-tracing, businesses were required to take down contact details of their visitors.

Noor Hisham said to date, 119,837 premises had registered with the app and users had checked-in over 10 million times.

He reiterated for Malaysians to avoid crowded places, confined spaces, and close conversations which he referred to as the "3Cs", as a precaution against Covid-19.

The director-general also reminded Malaysians to wash their hands with soap, wear a face mask in public, and heed warnings from the Health Ministry, referred to as the "3Ws".

He also informed that future Health Ministry briefings on Covid-19 would only be held on every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.