KUALA LUMPUR – Senior Minister (Security) Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob and Health Director-General Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah are expected to address the nation at 5pm today.
Malaysians can watch the press conference on Astro 502, myFreeview 121, unifi TV 631, Facebook and Bernama TV’s YouTube channel.
This comes after Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin’s statement yesterday, saying the government has agreed to further tighten restrictions under the current movement control order (MCO) following a spike in Covid-19 cases in recent weeks.
He said stricter measures will be imposed on economic and social sectors, but stopped short of saying if a lockdown similar to the first MCO last year would be enforced.
He said the decision was agreed to unanimously in a National Security Council (NSC) meeting yesterday.
“Further details of these additional restrictions will be announced by Senior Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob in a press conference tomorrow.”
Muhyiddin’s announcement followed the highly anticipated NSC meeting that was to decide on whether the government would introduce tighter standard operating procedures (SOPs) to combat the pandemic.
This is after the country logged record-high Covid-19 infections this week, breaching 6,000 cases for the first time since the outbreak began early last year.
As of yesterday, 498,795 people have been infected with the virus in Malaysia, including 2,149 who have died.
There are currently 643 Covid-19 patients in intensive care units, with 363 intubated.
It has also been reported that hospitals nationwide are nearing full capacity in their fight against the coronavirus.
Among others, the prime minister said that the meeting heard the Health Ministry’s update on the current status of the pandemic in the country, including its infectivity rate, states’ health system capacities and several proposals to contain the virus.
“The SOPs for MCO 3.0 have been tightened (previously), including barring interstate and inter-district travels, as well as restrictions on social, sports and recreational activities, and also physical conferences and meetings.
“However, the spread of the virus in the community has increased, and the existence of new, more aggressive virus variants with higher infectivity have made our efforts to flatten the infection curve take a longer period.”
All eyes will now be on today’s press conference, particularly among business industry players, who are urging the government not to implement a full lockdown.
Many claim such drastic measures could see more businesses going under and job losses for Malaysians. – The Vibes, May 22, 2021
