PETALING JAYA: The health ministry has reported 710 Covid-19 cases and 10 deaths in the past 24 hours.
Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said there were 467 recoveries, bringing the total number of those discharged to 15,884.
In a tweet, Noor Hisham said the 710 new cases bring the total number of infections in the country to 24,514.
With the new deaths, the toll is now 214.
It is the highest number of deaths in the country recorded in a day. The previous record was eight deaths on March 29.
Eight of the dead were from Sabah. They were aged between 33 and 77 and seven of them had a history of chronic illness.
Kedah and Labuan also reported one death each, aged 67 and 58 respectively.
A total of 8,416 people are still being treated, with 90 in the intensive care unit and 28 requiring respiratory assistance.
Of today’s new cases, 709 were local transmissions. Only one was an imported case from Nepal.
Sabah recorded the highest number of cases today with 528 infections, or 74.4% of today’s total tally.
Of the total, 203 were detected from active clusters and two cases were reported from the newly identified Samudera cluster. The remaining cases were detected through Covid-19 screenings in the state.
Selangor recorded the second highest number of cases again today with 62, followed by Penang (39), Negeri Sembilan (37), Labuan (19) and Kuala Lumpur (10).
The bulk of these cases were detected through contact tracing and from existing clusters.
Perak, Johor, Terengganu, Sarawak, Kedah and Pahang recorded fewer than 10 cases.