COVID-19 | Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah believes that the second movement control order (MCO 2.0) is working and says Malaysia has turned the corner in its fight against Covid-19.
Speaking at a press conference this evening, he called the 5,298 daily new cases recorded back on Jan 31 the “peak” of the country’s epidemiological curve.
“Our daily case numbers may have peaked on Jan 31.
“And we expect cases to plateau before we see them decreasing,” he said.
The top official previously attributed the high case numbers at the end of last month to reporting delays and backlog from 2020.
As of noon today, the country recorded 2,764 daily new cases.
Noor Hisham expected that cases and infectivity (Rt) will continue to fall, especially from next week onwards.
“We expect that we will see the effects of the MCO four weeks after it has been imposed.
“We are now in the third week and we hope that in another week’s time, we will see a decrease not only in daily cases but also Rt.
“We expect we can bring the Rt down from 1.2 to 0.6,” he said.
Nationwide, Rt has been under 1.00 in the past four days and was at 0.91 yesterday (Feb 8) after hovering between 1.00 and 1.10 since early last month.
An Rt below 1.00 indicates a shrinking outbreak.
However, some states continued to show Rt values above 1.00 as of Feb 8, indicating growing outbreaks there.
They are Malacca (1.27), Penang (1.09), Selangor (1.08), Johor (1.07), Kuala Lumpur (1.02) and Sarawak (1.00).
Double digits by May
Noor Hisham said the ministry predicted that daily new cases could fall to double digits as soon as the middle of May 2021.
This was provided the Rt could be lowered and maintained at 0.6.
“This means we will be able to bring down the cases and flatten the curve by March or April.
“We could aim to reach two digits (of daily new cases) by the middle or end of May. This is our target,” he said.
[More to follow] - Mkini
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