COVID-19 | The Health Ministry reported 4,362 new Covid-19 cases today, bringing the cumulative case count to 2,711,764.

The latest R-number has not been published yet at the time of writing.

However, hospitalisation of Covid-19 patients are continuing on a steady decline, down 7 percent over the past seven days compared to the preceding week.

Only Penang has seen hospitalisation trending up over the past week, but Covid-19 bed utilisation remains low at 34.8 percent.

Today's fresh infections were surpassed by a total of 5,098 Covid-19 patients who recovered today. This is expected to help reduce the number of active cases.

• Patients in ICU: 400
• Intubated: 198

The breakdown of new cases according to state will only be released after midnight. These are yesterday's figures (Dec 16), where 4,262 new cases were reported:

Selangor (1,388)
Johor (471)
Pahang (352)
Kuala Lumpur (300)
Kedah (261)
Penang (249)
Terengganu (214)
Perak (209)
Negeri Sembilan (203)
Sabah (195)
Kelantan (176)
Malacca (139)
Sarawak (45)
Perlis (29)
Putrajaya (25)
Labuan (6)

To date, 257 Covid-19 clusters are still active, including 12 new clusters reported today.

The ongoing clusters have seen an increase of 2.8 percent from the 250 active clusters a week ago.

[More to follow]