COVID: Malaysia to move into second phase if average daily cases drop below 4,000

KUALA LUMPUR: The average COVID-19 daily cases must be below 4,000 for seven consecutive days for Malaysia to transition into the second phase of the National Recovery Plan.

Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba said besides that, the bed utilisation at intensive care units (ICU) must be below 75 per cent in addition to 10 per cent of the population who have been fully vaccinated.

"Alhamdulillah, the vaccination rate today has reached 11 per cent 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 the exit strategy to bring Malaysia out of 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 ICU; and the level of protected population based on the percentage of completed vaccination.

Dr 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 the MCO 3.0, we managed to intervene until the SEIR projection is below one, namely 0.9," he explained.

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

Meanwhile, Dr Adham said the government has the plan to enable those aged 12 and above to be vaccinated but needed 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.

-- BERNAMA