PETALING JAYA: Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah expects the number of positive Covid-19 cases to remain high following the widespread screening of all foreign workers in Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Negeri Sembilan, Sabah and Labuan.
He said 80% of the positive cases from foreign worker screenings were from category 1 (asymptomatic).
He said hospitals had enough beds to treat Covid-19 patients in a serious condition.
“Currently, only 0.6% of the intensive care unit beds are in use and 1,550 ventilators are available for use.”
On the Sinovac vaccine from China, he said the government was still monitoring the clinical studies in Beijing.
He said Malaysia had identified eight hospitals for local trials to study the effectivity and side effects of the vaccine, developed by Beijing-based Sinovac Biotech Co Ltd.
On the effectiveness of the conditional movement control order (CMCO) still imposed in several states in the peninsula, he said this had prevented an exponential surge in the number of cases.
He added that the CMCO has succeeded in bringing down the infection rate (R0) from 2.2 to 0.96.
“But having said that, we need to bring the R0 further down to 0.5 or 0.3. Then, we can flatten the curve.”
Noor Hisham added that the R0 had been hovering around 1.1 and 0.9 over the past few weeks.
“If we continue to maintain this, it will still be under control, but we need to bring it down further.”
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