Dr Noor Hisham: Malaysia’s Covid-19 infectivity rate back up to nearly 1.0 as Negri tops list

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 25 — The basic reproduction number (R0) and effective reproduction number (Rt) for Covid-19 infections nationwide stood at 0.99 as of yesterday, said Health Director-General Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

In a tweet, he showed that the R0, which measures infecitivity rate, went up yesterday from 0.95 and 0.96 in the three days prior to that.

The last time the rate was that high was Februrary 5, subsequently staying below 0.92 from February 7 until 20.

Dr Noor Hisham also indicated that Negri Sembilan now has the highest rate among all the states, standing at 1.74 to 1.87, with a 95 per cent confidence interval.

The second highest is Perak with 1.29 to 1.39, followed by Sarawak with 1.08 to 1.16.

The R0 projects the average number of people that each new Covid-19 patient will infect, and must be below 1.0 so as to suppress further Covid-19 infections.

Earlier on February 9, Dr Noor Hisham said the movement control order (MCO) reintroduced last month has proved to be effective as daily new cases declined.

At the time, he said he remained hopeful the R0 could possibly drop to 0.6 by the following week.

Yesterday, the Health Ministry recorded 3,545 new daily Covid-19 cases, with 1,392 cases in Negri Sembilan alone. The country has now recorded 291,774 cases in total, with 30,677 cases still active.

Approximately 3,331 recoveries were also recorded, bringing total recoveries to 260,009. 12 deaths were recorded, bringing the death toll from the pandemic to 1,088.

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