Continue announcing total number of new infections

IN the 64th Report of the National Economic Implementation and Strategic Coordination Agency, Finance Minister Tengku Datuk Seri Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz stated that Malaysia will no longer use daily coronavirus infection numbers as one of the three indicators to allow states to move to the third and the final phase of the National Recovery Plan (NRP), as reported in “NRP: Number of serious cases new indicator for phase transitions, says Zafrul” (The Star, Aug 5; online at https://bit.ly/3iqe5WQ).

Instead, the number of new Covid-19 cases with serious symptoms will be used with two other thresholds – vaccination rate and ICU occupancy – remaining the same, said the Finance Minister who is also NRP coordinating minister.