M'sia managed to flatten Covid-19 curve: Noor Hisham

CORONAVIRUS | Malaysia has succeeded in flattening the infection curve and is now in the recovery phase to stamp out the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

He said this is based on the examination of the predictive model, where the data on April 3 was 217 new cases but the ministry did not see any further peak since then.

The ministry had initially braced for a peak on April 14 of 6,300 new cases but this figure was not seen.

“It means perhaps MCO 1 (of the movement control order) and MCO 2 actually flattened the peak, we realise now that we are on a recovery phase not at peak phase. So we hope to continue the momentum and make sure to control and reduce cases.

“But it is not impossible if there is an exponential surge if we leave our guard down. So it is important to continue to do what we did in MCO 1, 2 and now 3.

"We see some success of MCO 1, 2 and 3. We managed to flatten the curve and control the cases,” Noor Hisham said.

He was answering a question on whether Malaysia may experience a second peak of new Covid-19 infections, following the April 3 peak.

Noor Hisham earlier revealed that there were 88 new cases of Covid-19 as of noon today, marking the eighth straight day infections have remained in the double digits.

There were also 121 patients who have been cured and discharged. The total number of recoveries is now at 3,633.

Whereas the total number of positive cases is 5,691, of which only 1,932 are active.

There was one new death reported, raising the death toll to 96.

Meanwhile with regards to whether the country has fulfilled the six criteria needed before the government could consider lifting the MCO, Noor Hisham said that some of them have already been fulfilled.

Previously on April 21, Noor Hisham said that the six criteria that need to be fulfilled before the MCO could be considered to be lifted are border control, movement control, the readiness of the healthcare services system, protection of high-risk groups, the people's cooperation in practising social distancing, hand hygiene and avoidance of any gathering and implementation of in-community prevention.

He said that among those criteria fulfilled at the moment are readiness of the healthcare services system, the people’s cooperation in practicing social distancing, protection of high-risk groups and border control, among others.

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