COVID-19: Flattening the curve doesn't mean zero cases - Health DG

Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah today pointed out that a flattened infection curve does not mean there would be zero COVID-19 cases in the country.

What the flattened infection curve would mean is that the total number of cases would be manageable whereby the hospitals would be able cope with the number of patients.

“As we can see, as of today, in terms of the patients in intensive care unit (ICU) is increasing, so we need to make sure hospitals have the capacity to function well and provide good services to our patients," he said at the daily press conference on COVID-19 at the Ministry of Health (MOH) here, today.

Dr Noor Hisham also noted that at present, critical cases represent about five percent of the total number of COVID-19 cases.

Asked on the statement from the World Health Organisation (WHO) that Malaysia’s COVID-19 cases would peak by the middle of this month, he said MOH had predicted the same before.

Dr Noor Hisham said the worry now is about imported cases increasing and that is why implementation of Movement Control Order (MCO) in this country has to be tightened within these 14 days.

“We fear that imported cases will increase, that is one of the reasons why we implemented MCO and we will continue our active case tracing especially in hot-spot areas, and by doing so we can identify them early, test them, isolate them and treat them.

“This is a very crucial period, (and) within two weeks if all of us can come together and make sure that we play our role by staying at home, wash our hands, practice social distancing and social discipline among us, hopefully within this two-week period we can flatten the curve,” he said.

-- BERNAMA