COVID-19 | The Health Ministry reported 3,490 new Covid-19 cases today, bringing the cumulative infections to 2,691,639.

The fresh infections today is the lowest since May 4.

They comprised 3,333 Malaysians (95.5 percent) and 157 non-citizens (4.5 percent).

The new cases were surpassed by a total of 5,399 Covid-19 patients who recovered today. This is expected to help reduce the number of active cases.

• Patients in ICU: 407
• Intubated: 216

As of today, the number of Covid-19 patients (including suspected ones) in the intensive care unit (ICU) is 13.6 percent lower compared to a week ago.

Those who require intubation have also declined by 18.2 percent from a week ago.

Meanwhile, the R-naught value or infectivity rate continues to hover at around 0.97. 

The value must be kept under 1.0 to prevent exponential growth in new Covid-19 cases.

Nationally, the number of hospital admissions of confirmed Covid-19 patients in the last seven days has declined by 7.3 percent compared to the preceding week.

However, bucking the national trend, hospital admissions of confirmed Covid-19 patients in Negeri Sembilan rose by 24.4 percent during the same period.

The Health Ministry will only publish today's breakdown of new cases by states after midnight on its CovidNow portal.

The breakdown by states for yesterday (Dec 11), where 4,626 new cases were reported, is as follows:

Selangor (1,227)
Johor (480)
Kelantan (386)
Kuala Lumpur (349)
Penang (345)
Pahang (326)
Kedah (308)
Sabah (287)
Perak (207)
Malacca (202)
Terengganu (180)
Negeri Sembilan (161)
Sarawak (74)
Perlis (39)
Putrajaya (29)
Labuan (26)

To date, 243 Covid-19 clusters are still active, including two new clusters reported today.

The ongoing clusters have seen an increase of 4.3 percent from the 233 active clusters a week ago.