PETALING JAYA (THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - Malaysia recorded 54 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday (April 18), taking the total number of confirmed infections in the country to 5,305.

This was the lowest number of new cases since the movement control order (MCO) started on March 18.

It reported 69 new cases on Friday, which was also a new record low since MCO began.

The figures released on Saturday were the third time this week that the country has recorded only double-digit figures for new cases in a 24-hour span.

At the Health Ministry's daily Covid-19 media briefing, the Health Ministry's director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said there were two new deaths, bringing the death toll to 88 cases.

This translates to a fatality rate of 1.66 per cent out of the total number of cases.

He said 135 more patients were discharged as of noon on Saturday.

So far, 3,102 patients have recovered from Covid-19 in Malaysia since the outbreak began, which means there are only 2,115 active cases currently being treated at the country's health facilities.

The rate of Covid-19 recovery in Malaysia is 58.5 per cent out of the total number of positive cases.

Currently, 49 patients are being treated at intensive care units (ICU), with 26 of them requiring the use of ventilators.

One of the deaths was a 60-year-old Malaysian man who had a history of high blood pressure and diabetes, while the other was a 36-year-old Myanmar man who came in late for treatment.

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Malaysia is on Saturday into its 32nd day of the stay-at-home order.

The MCO is scheduled to end on April 28.

Meanwhile, Dr Noor Hisham said that the government aims to screen more foreign workers, after noting the surge in virus infections among Singapore's foreign workers.

“We are embarking on a big scale of screening of foreign workers as well. That is part of our focused group,” he said, as quoted by Malay Mail online news.

The government had in the past few weeks been focusing some of its screening efforts at students of Islamic tahfiz schools as many of them attended a gathering of the Tabligh missionary group that led to mass infections in Malaysia.