COVID-19: Malaysia manages to reduce infectivity rate - Health D-G

PUTRAJAYA, Oct 18 -- Malaysia has successfully reduced the COVID-19 infectivity rate (Rt) or R-naught (R0) from 2.2 at the start of the third wave on Sept 20 to between 1.3 to 1.5 now.

Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said this meant that so far, the government's efforts had prevented a sharp increase in cases.

However, he said looking at the trend of COVID-19 positive cases over the past few days and the projection of cases in the coming days, he expected the R0 to remain in the range of 1.5, with some increase in the number of cases, but not at an alarming rate.

"This projection is very important, because it shows that there is still room for us to try to control the situation in this third wave.

"All Public Health efforts on the field must continue and stepped up, movement control must be tightened and the people must help the country by staying at home," he said during his press conference at the Ministry of Health (MOH) here today.

Commenting further, Dr Noor Hisham said the R0 referred to the infectivity of the virus, meaning how many individuals could be infected by positive cases or hosts of the virus during their infectious period.

He said R0 could decrease if proper preventive measures were carried out on a continuous basis.

"Lowering the R0 value to less than 1 on a consistent basis can help end a pandemic," he said.

-- BERNAMA