Bangkok (dpa) – Malaysia’s Health Ministry said 7,857 people had tested positive for coronavirus on Thursday, another new one-day record and the third day in a row more than 7,000 cases had been confirmed.
Around one-third of the cases were reported in the industrial heartland of Selangor, ministry Director-General Noor Hisham Abdullah said.
Hisham earlier called for volunteers to help health care workers, who said are exhausted by the surge in patient numbers.
At the start of April, the ministry was reporting roughly 1,000 cases a day, but since then numbers have surged, with the 32.75-million-population country reporting the highest case numbers per capita in South-East Asia since last month.
Measured per million people, Malaysia’s daily case numbers overtook India’s earlier this week, going by official data collated by the University of Oxford.
Around 550,000 infections have been recorded in the country since the first was reported early last year. Sixty-three virus-related deaths were reported on Wednesday, taking the total to 2,432.
Health Minister Adham Baba said on Thursday that authorities are considering deploying a new one-minute breath test for the virus developed in neighbouring Singapore and being trialled by border officials manning the land crossing from Malaysia.
Almost 1 million people have been fully vaccinated, the minister said.
