Malaysia to move into second phase if average daily cases stay below 4,000 for 7 days

Average daily cases of Covid-19 must be below 4,000 for seven consecutive days for Malaysia to transition into the second phase of the National Recovery Plan, says Health Minister Dr Adham Baba.

He said bed utilisation at ICUs must also be below 75% while 10% of the population must be fully vaccinated.

“Alhamdulillah, the vaccination rate today has reached 11% and with the threshold indicator approach, we can move into the second, third and fourth phase,” he said in Bernama TV’s Ruang Bicara programme last night.

The National Recovery Plan, which comprises four phases, is Malaysia’s exit strategy from the Covid-19 crisis.

It will be based on three indicators, namely the situation of Covid-19 transmission in the community based on the number of daily cases of infection; the capacity of the public health system based on bed occupancy rate in the ICU; and the level of protected population based on the percentage of completed vaccination.

Adham said the implementation of the movement control order (MCO) 3.0 was an intervention method to achieve the targets of the plan.

“We have the SEIR (susceptible-exposed-infected-removed) model projection and in the National Recovery Plan, we will look at the value of RT (infectivity rate).

“If the RT stays at 1.2, based on the SEIR projection, we might record up to 13,000 (Covid-19) cases…but due to MCO 3.0, we managed to intervene until the SEIR projection is below one, namely 0.9,” he said.

“This needs a strong will, which is to fight Covid-19 with public health action, vaccination and the solidarity of the people because we are not only facing the old virus but also the new variants.”

Meanwhile, Adham said the government had a plan to enable those aged 12 and above to be vaccinated but that it needs to ensure that the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme is completed first.

“We need to have convincing data from Pfizer and we also need to prioritise Form Five and Form Six students who will sit for major examinations,” he said.