Health Ministry hopes to achieve single-digit new Covid-19 cases by next week

CORONAVIRUS | The Health Ministry hopes to achieve single-digit new Covid-19 cases by next week, said its director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

“We need to continue to do what we did in the first and second phases of the movement control order (MCO) and hopefully by doing so we can bring down the figure.

“Today we have 36 new cases, among the lowest, but we want to see a single-digit.

“Maybe we can achieve single-digit within one week,” Noor Hisham said in a press conference at the Health Ministry today.

However, he stressed that this can only be done if everyone works together and makes sure they continue to stay at home.

Earlier in the press conference, he had said that the recent decrease in new cases daily is a result of proactive and aggressive testing especially in the last two weeks.

He warned that the number of new cases could potentially increase again in the next two weeks, as they are still conducting active case detection, such as on Malaysians returning from overseas or those within the enhanced MCO areas.

Noor Hisham also addressed concerns that the N95 mask supplies were dwindling, saying that those masks are for Health Ministry staff or frontliners facing Covid-19 patients in the wards or intensive care units (ICU).

Those who are not on duty in Covid-19 wards can use the three-ply masks, he said.

“We do not have any problems with the three-ply masks (supplies) but with N95, we need to save them for those who need the N95 masks in the ward or ICU.

“But even if we do not have the N95 masks, we can use the face shields and the three-ply masks for those working in the clinics and so on,” he said.

He added that they will look into the usage of the N95 masks as well as its distribution.

Noor Hisham was also asked whether Malaysia should follow the examples of several other countries that are conducting random tests on their citizens for Covid-19.

The ministry, he said, is considering conducting research in red zones to test how many people have the antibodies which will develop once an individual is exposed to the virus.

“We want to know how many in the red zones have been infected but was not detected (at that time).

“Maybe this is a good research and can be considered. This test will use the antibody test kit… but this is not for diagnosis. It is more to find out how many people in a community were infected but went undetected,” he explained. - Mkini