KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Malaysia reported a new daily record in coronavirus infections and deaths on Thursday, as the country deals with spike in the number and severity of new cases.
It announced 59 COVID-19 fatalities on Thursday, a record toll for the third day this week, while its 6,806 new cases was the second straight day of record infections.
The latest numbers pushed Malaysia’s total cases to 492,302 – the third highest in Southeast Asia behind Indonesia and the Philippines.
Malaysia is under a nationwide lockdown that came into effect earlier this month, prohibiting inter-district travel and shutting down schools.
It has also been under a state of emergency since January to curb the spread of the virus.
Officials have said they are seeing an increasing number of serious COVID-19 infections in the current wave.
The latest spike is partly due to highly infectious variants found in recent weeks.
In a tweet, the health ministry said the occupancy rate of beds at intensive care units of public hospitals was at over 70%.
It asked private hospitals to increase the numbers of beds used to treat COVID-19 patients.
(Reporting by A. Ananthalakshmi and Rozanna Latiff; Editing by Martin Petty)
