COVID: NEW CASES DIP BELOW 3,000 MARK TO 2,882 TODAY - HEALTH DG

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 2 -- Daily COVID-19 infections in the country fell below the 3,000 mark again when 2,882 new cases were recorded today compared with 3,386 cases yesterday, bringing the cumulative total now to 2,764,354.

The last time the daily cases dipped below 3,000 with 2,897 cases reported was on Dec 28 last year.

Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said of the total new cases, 49 were in categories three, four and five while the rest were in categories one and two - asymptomatic or with mild symptoms.

"A total of 284 cases require treatment in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) while 156 cases are on ventilator support," he said in his daily statement on the COVID-19 situation today.

A total of 3,291 recoveries were recorded bringing the cumulative total of recoveries to 2,692,216.

Dr Noor Hisham said 172 COVID-19 variant of concern (VOC) cases were reported for the period Dec 25, 2021 to Jan 2, 2022 of  which 170 were of the Delta variant and two were Omicron variant cases.

"This brings the cumulative cases infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus categorised as VOC and variant of interest (VOI) to 5,480 cases," he said.

On COVID-19 cases among flood victims, Dr Noor Hisham informed there were nine new cases bringing the total involving flood victims so far to 460 cases.

Meanwhile, a total of 63 cases of infectious diseases  have been detected among flood victims, of which 42 cases were acute respiratory tract infections (ARI), skin diseases (10) and acute gastroenteritis (AGE) (11).

-- BERNAMA