CMCO bearing fruit, infectivity rate brought down

 

Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the conditional movement control order (CMCO) is bearing fruit as the infectivity rate has been brought down nationwide.

Noor Hisham said when the CMCO was first implemented, the infectivity rate or R0 (pronounced R-naught) value in the country was 2.2.

It has since been brought down to 1.2 as of today, he said.

“It was 2.2 at the beginning, last week we brought it down to 1.5 and today it is 1.2, but it is not enough.

“We still have to bring it down below one. If possible, 0.3 because if we can bring it down to 0.3 then we can flatten the curve,” he said in his press conference at the Health Ministry in Putrajaya today.

He said the current R0 is still not good enough because while there will not be any exponential surge in cases, the cases would still increase consistently every day.

Currently, there are several areas under CMCO, which are Sabah, the Klang Valley as well as Nilai in Negeri Sembilan.

Noor Hisham was responding to a question on whether the CMCO is working and whether there is a need to tighten restrictions.

He reiterated that there is a need to balance the health of the people and the economy.

As the full MCO would have a great impact on the economy, he said the government has decided to use a “hybrid” model.

Areas of concern would be placed under conditional MCO but those which are more severe would be placed under targeted enhanced MCO, to facilitate community screening, such as in the Benteng cluster in Lahad Datu, he said. - Mkini