James Kon
The number of daily new COVID-19 cases in the country has dropped below 2,000 for the first time this month with 1,666 cases detected yesterday. This brought the national tally of confirmed cases to 120,600 cases. Of the new cases, 1,430 were from ART results uploaded to the BruHealth app, whereas 236 were from 2,278 RT-PCR laboratory tests performed in the past 24 hours.
One case has passed away and is not categorised as death due to COVID-19.
The latest situation of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country was shared by Minister at the Prime Minister’s Office and Minister of Finance and Economy II Dato Seri Setia Dr Awang Haji Mohd Amin Liew bin Abdullah in a press conference yesterday.
Also in attendance was Minister of Education Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Hamzah bin Haji Sulaiman.
On the tragic news of the death, Dato Seri Setia Dr Awang Haji Mohd Amin Liew representing “the Ministry of Health as well as the people of Brunei Darussalam, would like to express our deepest condolences to the case’s family. May the case’s soul receive blessings and be placed among the pious”.
He also revealed that there are currently 22 cases in Category 4, an addition of six new cases. Meanwhile there is a reduction of two cases in Category 5, bringing the total number of cases in the category to five. The total number of cases in Categories 4 and 5 makes up 10.4 per cent of the treatment capacity at the National Isolation Centre.
The minister shared that 5,274 cases have recovered, bringing the total number of recoveries to 100,048 with total active cases at 20,375.
At present, the bed occupancy rate at isolation centres nationwide is six per cent, the minister said, with 214 active cases in isolation centres and hospitals, adding that a total of 20,161 positive cases are currently undergoing home self-isolation.
On the current rate of vaccination, Dato Seri Setia Dr Awang Haji Mohd Amin Liew said as of March 16 59.2 per cent of the population had received three doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, while 94 per cent had received at least one dose.
Meanwhile, there were no violations found during the movement restriction from midnight to 4am yesterday.
