PUTRAJAYA: Malaysia needs to examine the effects of restarting its various sectors and leisure activities under the Recovery Movement Control Order (RMCO) first before considering reopening its borders.
Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said should the country successfully handle the reopening of the sectors and manage its Covid-19 numbers, only then can it shift its attention to reopening its borders.
"During this RMCO period, we will increase our surveillance and monitoring process as more sectors will be reopened in stages.
"Screening within communities will also be carried out from time to time. We are trying to balance the lives and livelihood of our country," he told a daily press conference here today.
He said Malaysia will consider employing the "green bubble" concept if the number of Covid-19 infections is under control during the RMCO.
"We need to look at the standard operating procedures of the countries involved. These include Covid-19 screenings, whether the tests should be taken at the countries of origin, as well as taking into account the number of cases and green zones in the respective countries.
"There are many things that we must look into before we can consider using the concept," he said.
Dr Noor Hisham was responding to a question on whether borders can be reopened with the continuing downtrend in new Covid-19 cases.
Meanwhile, he said the ministry is looking at introducing virtual clinics and home visits to ease congestion at its health facilities.
"We are looking at setting up virtual clinics for our patients where those in need of medicine need not come to us as we will deliver it to them."
He said the ministry is also looking at delivering its services to the patients' homes and in communities such as longhouses.
Meanwhile, Dr Noor Hisham also commented on the government's MySejahtera app crashing, with over 700,000 registrations recorded per minute.
He quipped that perhaps some "social distancing" was required when registering for the app. The ministry, he said, is looking at extending the registration period to allow more people to register.
The government had previously announced that the RM50 e-wallet credit for the public under the National Economic Recovery Plan (Penjana) would only be credited to those who had downloaded and signed up on the MySejahtera app.
The app, co-developed by the Health Ministry, Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, and the National Cyber Security Agency (Nacsa), was created to help monitor the spread of the Covid-19 outbreak in the country by enabling users to carry out self-health assessments.