In his update for the week ending Oct 1, Noor Hisham said the number of Covid-19 patients admitted to public hospitals under Category 1 and 2 went down by 7.7% per 100,000 from the preceding week, while Category 3, 4 and 5 patients dropped by 13%.

The bed occupancy rate in low-risk quarantine and treatment centres remained unchanged from last week.

Overall bed occupancy for non-critical beds dropped by 1% while the utilisation of intensive care unit (ICU) beds was down by 3%.

Active cases decreased during the week by 2.5% to 24,713.

“Recoveries dropped by 8.4% from 13,677 cases to 12,534,” Noor Hisham said.

“The number of deaths decreased by 35% from 40 to 26, bringing the cumulative figure for fatalities to 36,374.”

He said 4,842,505 Covid-19 cases had been recorded in the country since January 2020.