KUALA LUMPUR – Daily Covid-19 cases must fall below 4,000 for seven consecutive days for Malaysia to transition into the second phase of the National Recovery Plan, said Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba.
Additionally, said the health minister, bed utilisation at intensive care units must be less than 75%, and 10% of the population has to be fully inoculated against the disease.
“Alhamdulillah, the vaccination rate today (yesterday) has reached 11%. With the threshold indicator approach, we can move into the second, third and fourth phases,” he said on Bernama TV’s Ruang Bicara programme last night.
The four-phase National Recovery Plan is Malaysia’s Covid-19 exit strategy.
It will be based on three main indicators: community transmission based on the number of daily infections, ICU bed occupancy rate, and percentage of the population that has completed vaccination.
Dr Adham said the implementation of the third movement control order (MCO) 3.0 is an intervention aimed at achieving the plan’s targets.
“We have the SEIR (susceptible-exposed-infected-removed) model projection, and in the National Recovery Plan, we will look at the value of the RT (infectivity rate). If the RT stayed at 1.2, based on the SEIR projection, we might record up to 13,000 cases... but due to MCO 3.0, we managed to bring it down to 0.9.
“There is a need for strong will to fight Covid-19 with public health action, vaccination and the people’s solidarity, as we are also facing new variants of the virus.”
He said the government plans to allow children aged 12 and up to be vaccinated, but it needs to ensure that the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme is completed first.
“We must have convincing data from Pfizer, and we also need to prioritise Forms 5 and 6 students who will sit major examinations.” – Bernama, June 19, 2021
