KUALA LUMPUR - Malaysia on Friday (July 23) reported 15,573 new coronavirus cases, the highest number of daily cases since the start of the pandemic.

This brings the country's cumulative total to 980,491 cases.

In a tweet, health director-general Noor Hisham Abdullah said Selangor recorded the most infections with 7,672 cases, followed by Kuala Lumpur with 2,063 cases.

Malaysia on Friday also reported 144 Covid-19 related deaths, bringing the death toll to 7,718.

Meanwhile, Malaysia is edging closer to having half of its adult population jabbed at least once with a Covid-19 vaccine, said Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin.

The authorities have also confirmed one case of an individual being injected with an empty syringe in its national vaccination roll-out, categorising it as a human error.

In addition, there were two cases where individuals were given an extra dose of the Covid-19 vaccine because it was unclear if they had initially been administered empty syringes, said Coordinating Minister for Immunisation Khairy Jamaluddin in a briefing on Friday.

"Even if there's one single error, that's one error too many," said Mr Khairy. "So for those cases where there was human negligence, I apologise to them. And, of course, we will do better."

The confirmed case occurred in the northern state of Kedah where a nurse admitted that she had been negligent due to exhaustion, said Mr Khairy, who added that disciplinary action will be taken against her.

Thirteen police reports have been lodged so far on other alleged similar incidents, with most of them found to be false or inconclusive, said Mr Khairy.

Some of the cases were lodged by recipients who did not experience any side effects after getting inoculated, he was quoted by the Malay Mail news portal as saying.

Mr Khairy also stressed that there has been no evidence to suggest a link between the alleged empty vaccine shots and illegal vaccine sales.

In a Facebook post, Tan Sri Muhyiddin said 46.7 per cent of Malaysia's adult population has received at least one dose of the vaccine and 21.8 per cent have received both doses, amid a push to fully vaccinate all adults by October.

He said that the country hit a new record on Thursday with a daily vaccination rate of 507,050 doses.

"This achievement is in line with the target set and must be further improved so that we can achieve the target of 26 million fully vaccinated Malaysians," said Mr Muhyiddin.

"With vaccinations, we will be able to help reduce the burden of cases in hospitals and severe infections," he said.

Malaysia has more than 147,000 active Covid-19 cases, with nearly 1,000 patients in intensive care.

It has been consistently recording more than 10,000 cases daily, with over 100 deaths a day, for the past week.