COVID-19 | Malaysia could see its number of new Covid-19 cases increasing up to 8,000 a day by the end of May, according to a projection by the Ministry of Health (MOH), if the country's coronavirus infectivity rate continues at 1.1.
MOH director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah posted two charts on Twitter yesterday which simulated possible scenarios for the country should it fail to bring down the Covid-19 infectivity rate, or R-naught (R0).
The R-naught figure is used by epidemiologists to describe how infectious a disease is. A rate above one means that its infectivity is increasing.
"Take attention of the Covid-19 daily number of cases, and the projection of cases from Jan 4 to May 31, 2021 with R-naught of 1.1 and 1.2," said Noor Hisham in his Tweet.
With an R-naught of 1.1, the MOH projected that Malaysia could record daily cases of 5,000 by the second week of April. If that continued, the number would rise to 8,000 by the fourth week of May.
With an R-naught of 1.2, the MOH expects that the spike in daily cases would come even sooner in Malaysia.
It projected that the country could see 5,000 daily cases by the third week of February, which would keep increasing to 8,000 daily cases by the third week of March.
Yesterday, Malaysia recorded its highest-ever number of daily cases with 3,027. It was the first time the country has hit the 3,000 mark.
It broke a new record in the number of cases just a day before (Jan 6), which was 2,593.
The big jump on Thursday meant that the country's Covid-19 infectivity rate had increased from 1.07 to 1.11.
However, it remains to be seen whether this infectivity spike was a brief flash or would last for a while. - Mkini
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