In his update for the week ending March 4, Noor Hisham said the number of patients admitted to public hospitals under Category 1 to 5 remained at 2.8% per 100,000 of the population from the preceding week.

He said occupancy of non-critical beds went up by 1%, while occupancy of ICU beds remained at 2%.

The average number of active cases through the past week stood at 8,851.

“Recoveries dropped by 8.8% from 1,497 cases to 1,365,” Noor Hisham said.

“The number of deaths stood at eight, 300% up from the two the week before, bringing the cumulative figure for fatalities to 36,965.”

Noor Hisham said a total of 5,043,626 Covid-19 cases have been recorded in the country since January 2020.

He also said the ministry’s Covid-19 updates will now be issued every two weeks, instead of every week until now.