‘We are doing better than predicted’

PUTRAJAYA: As April reaches its midpoint, the Health Ministry says Malaysia has been doing better than predicted in managing the Covid-19 pandemic.

Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah (pic) said the country’s current tally of 4,817 Covid-19 cases is a lot less than many expert projections.

“JP Morgan had forecasted that by April 14, which is tomorrow, Malaysia would have 6,300 Covid-19 cases. But today, we have 4,817 cases. By tomorrow, we might have fewer than 5,000 cases.

“We are certainly doing much better than predicted, ” he said at the ministry’s daily Covid-19 press conference here.

Dr Noor Hisham said Malaysia’s ability to reduce the number of infections in the country was down to the effectiveness of its movement control order (MCO), which has been in place since March 18.

“This shows that the first and second phases of the MCO is working and showing signs that we have successfully contained the spread of Covid-19.

“However, we have not managed to bring down further the number of cases. So this third phase is important.

“We want to end the spread of Covid-19 in the country and this requires the work of not just the ministry, but all of us, together, ” said Dr Noor Hisham.

On whether the ministry is doing enough testing, Dr Noor Hisham said its experience with areas under the enhanced MCO showed that only 0.5% were found positive when active case detection was conducted.

“We have screened 83,488 people in the country, and only 4,817 were found to be positive. This translates to 5.8%, and it is well below the World Health Organisation’s recommendation of 10%.

“But at the enhanced MCO areas, we screen everybody, whether or not they are symptomatic, or from high-risk groups.

“And we found that from screening every single person, we were only able to detect 0.5% positive cases.

“So if we test only targeted high-risk groups, we will get a better outcome using the limited resources that we have, rather than conduct tests on every single person, ” said Dr Noor Hisham.

Yesterday, Dr Noor Hisham announced 134 new Covid-19 cases, bringing the country’s cumulative total to 4,817 cases.

With 2,276 recoveries and 77 fatalities so far, there are a total of 2,464 patients currently being treated in Malaysia.