PUTRAJAYA: Covid-19-positive individuals who are asymptomatic do not have the potential to infect others because they have a low "virus load" compared with those who are symptomatic, said Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.
However, he said, infectivity could occur two days before an affected individual showed symptoms.
"So we need to differentiate that the ones without symptoms do not have any problems as there's no infectivity. But we found that those with symptoms could infect others two days before having those symptoms," he said at his daily press conference yesterday, according to Bernama.
He said the first week of being symptomatic was when the virus was active enough in a patient to infect others, but if the individual was isolated for between eight and 10 days, or 14 days as is being done by the government, the infectivity rate could be reduced to almost zero.
"For those who are asymptomatic, perhaps they won't be able to infect others within 14 days. But infection can happen two days before the symptomatic period. So if we isolate them, we can break the Covid-19 chain of transmission."
He said the Health Ministry would today share its model on the projection for Covid-19 cases in the past month, the present and the future.
"For cases involving Malaysians, we found that there was adherence to the standard operating procedures (SOP), and when we comply with the SOP, it means the R-nought (RO) is less than 0.3 per cent," he said. RO refers to the infectivity rate.
"But for non-Malaysians, if we minus the Immigration detention depot and import cases, we find that the RO is still about 0.3 per cent. We are monitoring daily the development among Malaysians and non-Malaysians."
He said there were six active Covid-19 clusters.
He said besides the three new clusters discovered in Maran and Bera in Pahang, the others were in Sepang (Sepang Immigration Detention Depot), Hulu Langat (Kampung Sungai Lui) and Pudu.
Up to noon yesterday, 57 new cases were recorded, bringing the tally of infections to 7,819. Of the 57 cases, 10 were imported and 47 were local transmissions.
Dr Noor Hisham said the total number of active cases was 1,351. No new deaths were recorded.
He said the death rate among smokers infected with Covid-19 was higher than non-smokers.
He said based on a study by the Health Ministry on smoking history and risk of non-communicable diseases involving 86 patients who died from the coronavirus, it was found that 19.8 per cent, or 17 of them, were smokers.
"The same analysis also found that death due to Covid-19 among those without any chronic illness but with a history of smoking stood at 17.6 per cent, compared with 12.1 per cent for non-smokers."
He said smoking would lead to various diseases and could weaken the immune system, subsequently increasing the risk of bacterial and virus infections, especially during the Covid-19 outbreak.
He said for those who wanted to seek help to quit smoking but could not do so due to the CMCO, the ministry had set up an online counselling service.
The service is a joint initiative with the Malaysian Pharmaceutical Society, International Islamic University Malaysia and Universiti Kebangsaaan Malaysia.
"Those seeking help to quit smoking can visit www.jomquit.moh.gov.my."
He said during the Movement Conditional Order and Conditional Movement Control Order, about 400 smokers had registered online to seek help to quit smoking and more than 5,000 people had visited the website.
He said the figures showed that there was an increase in awareness among smokers of the risk of smoking.
"We hope that more will come forward and take action for the sake of their health and their loved ones, especially the elderly and children."