KUALA LUMPUR, May 22 — Health authorities today reported the possibility of reducing Covid-19 cases to below 10 daily if the public follows standard operating procedures (SOPs).
“If we look at the modelling that we did, if we follow the SOP, we may reduce the number of cases in one to two weeks. The cases might reach one-digit,” said Health director-general Noor Hisham Abdullah.
He, however, cautioned the public that numbers would increase rapidly if SOP was not followed.
“So this depends on how well people follow SOP,” he added.
The R0 (pronounced R-naught) of Covid-19 in Malaysia was 3.55 before the country implemented the Movement Control Order (MCO) on March 18, he said.
This means that each infected person spreads the highly contagious disease to about 3.55 people on average.
But the R0 has now dropped to 0.3, which indicates that the disease is dying.
“When we go back to our hometowns and do not follow SOP, we are carrying the virus along,” he added.
Last week, MOH announced that almost 85 per cent of Covid-19 patients from the tahfiz cluster were asymptomatic or did not show any symptoms.
Dr Noor Hisham urged the public to follow the SOP by maintaining social distance, practice good hygienic measures, and to avoid visiting homes during festive season, to mitigate the transmission of the virus to vulnerable groups of people.
MOH also reported 78 new Covid-19 cases today, bringing the total number of cases to 7,137.
The Health DG said 25 of the new cases are imported cases, while the balance 53 cases are local transmission, involving 40 foreigners.
Twenty-five foreigners were detected with positive Covid-19 at the Bukit Jalil immigration detention centre.
A total of 63 patients have recovered and been discharged from hospital today. A total of 5,859 patients have recovered from Covid-19 in Malaysia thus far.
Out of the 1,163 being active cases, nine patients are being treated in the intensive care unit and 5 require ventilator support. MOH also reported one new Covid-19 death, with the total number of death cases now standing at 115.
“The new death case today involved a man aged 65 who has diabetes, high blood pressure, and kidney disease,” said Dr Noor Hisham.
