KUALA LUMPUR, May 13 — The Ministry of Health (MOH) managed to reduce the ‘R0’ or ‘R-nought’ for the Covid-19 outbreak in the country because of the positive steps taken by the government and the compliance of Malaysians, Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said.
In his daily press briefing broadcast “live” from Putrajaya, Dr Noor Hisham said that the effectiveness of the government’s approach can be proven by the use of modelling and forecasting methods developed by the National Health Institute (NHI) and the MOH, where four rounds of the movement control order (MCO) proved successful in flattening the Covid-19 curve in the country.
‘R-nought’ is a mathematical term indicating how contagious an infectious disease is.
“The value of R may decrease if accurate precautionary measures are carried out continuously in the community. Likewise, this value can rise again if society is lax and preventive measures are ignored.
“Lowering the value of R to less than one on a regular basis will put an end to the outbreak. If the modelling graph ad MOH’s prediction are viewed again, the value of R-nought at the beginning of the movement control order (MCO) on March 18, 2020 was 3.5.
“This R value has been reduced to 0.3, which is a positive result following the actions taken by the government, aided by the people’s compliance,” Dr Noor Hisham said.
He added that should all parties including traders, employers, employees and the public comply with the conditional movement control order (CMCO) and the standard operating procedures (SOPs) set by the government, the R value will continue to decrease, and the Covid-19 outbreak will be stopped.
However, Dr Noor Hisham warned that should people at large begin to act lackadaisical, the R value would increase again, in tandem with the rise in the number of cases.
He said that though cumulative cases have been on the up, but this has been slowing too.
“Looking at the cumulative case, the number has indeed been increasing but the rate is found to be slowing down. This is because the number of daily cases is also decreasing.
“This causes the number of active cases to decrease, thus indicating that the action taken so far has been successful in flattening the curve,” he added.
Dr Noor Hisham said that the MCO 1, 2, 3 and 4 as well as the subsequent CMCO have given much-needed space to the government to enact many initiatives in the interest of public health, to curb the spread of Covid-19.
This, he listed, included border controls, individual samplings, active case detection as well as a targeted approach for high-risk groups.
