The number of COVID-19 cases may stabilise in about a week's time.

Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the high cases over the past few days were due to infections before the Movement Control Order (MCO) was enforced in several states on Jan 13.

"In the next two or three days, we expect cases will still be high. Hopefully, numbers will stabilise in a week to about 3,000 cases.

"At the end of the two-week MCO, we will evaulate if there is a need to extend for another two weeks," The Star quoted Noor Hisham telling a press conference yesterday.

During the press conference, Noor Hisham also revealed that the number of severely-ill COVID-19 patients have increased to up to 15 per cent at public hospitals, compared to just three per cent during the second wave of infections last year.

The number of deaths have also increased, with 148 COVID-19-related deaths recorded since January 1 alone. This is more than all the deaths that occurred in the first nine months of last year, he added.

Six states, namely Selangor, Penang, Melaka, Johor, Sabah, as well as the Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Labuan, are already under the MCO until Jan 26.

Yesterday, Putrajaya announced that all the remaining states in Peninsular Malaysia will also be put under the MCO until Feb 4. The only state that is currently not under the MCO is Sarawak.

Malaysia's daily COVID-19 cases have remained above the 3,000 mark since Jan 14. Yesterday, 3,631 new cases and 14 deaths were recorded, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 165,371 and 615 deaths, respectively.

The global infection and death tally from the coronavirus has surpassed 96.5 million and two million, respectively.


Source: The Star
Photo source: Rojak Daily