Photo via TODAYOnline
While our daily COVID-19 numbers remain in the 3K-range, the Health Ministry (MOH) insists it has no plans to extend the ongoing Movement Control Order (MCO) beyond the tentative end date of February 4th.
During his daily press briefing yesterday (January 25th), Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the government is concerned that a prolonged MCO would have too much of an impact on the country’s economy.
“During the (first) MCO last year, the government lost RM2.4 billion per day, it had an impact on our economy. The results were good, but were we overdoing it? For this MCO 2.0, we expect it to last at least four weeks. We do not want to prolong it, because we must balance both life and livelihood,” he said.
Dr Noor Hisham added that the Conditional MCO (CMCO) would most likely be reinstated after February 4th, further explaining that the one in October last year was not a failure because if it was, over 4 million Malaysians would have been infected with the virus.
“With the combination of the MCO and the Conditional MCO, we can reduce the number of cases to two digits by May. This is our projection. We hope the cases can stabilise at 3,000, and after January 27th, we expect to see the number of cases go down,” he said.
Dr Noor Hisham also reiterated the importance of following SOPs, saying that the MCO wouldn’t be necessary if the public had strictly adhered to them.
Failure to observe physical distancing was the top violation detected by the compliance operation task force yesterday, with over 700 individuals arrested.
It’s a joint effort to flatten the curve, guys! Please continue to follow SOPs.
by Kyle Roshen Jacob
