PUTRAJAYA: The public should stay at home and comply with the standard operating procedures (SOPs) in order to break the chain of Covid-19 transmission and successfully bring down the R-naught (R0) value to below 1.0.
In making the plea, Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the country's Covid-19 infectivity rate R0 has dropped to 1.5 from 2.2 at the start of the third wave of infections on Sept 20 amid safety and preventive measures enforced by the government.
R0, an indicator of how contagious the infection is, shows the average number of people who will contract the disease from a single infected person.
Following the 1.5 trajectory, cases would continue to increase but not drastically, he said.
"Therefore, the Health Ministry is appealing to all parties to play their respective roles.
"While the ministry and other agencies are carrying out their duties, the community is asked to continue to provide support by fully complying with the prescribed SOPs. Stay at home if you have no matters to attend to outside.
"If it is necessary to leave the house on important matters, the community is requested to comply with the SOPs," he said at a special press briefing on R0 today.
Dr Noor Hisham further called on the authorities to beef up measures by tightening border control, movement control and the Conditional Movement Control Order's (CMCO) SOPs imposed in the Klang Valley and Sabah.
"We started with an R0 of 2.2 where if we failed to act sooner, the cases would have escalated to over 1,000 daily new cases, possibly reaching even 5,000 cases by Oct 31.
"But in four weeks, we brought it down to 1.5, which means our measures are working. This means the daily cases will continue to increase but not exponentially.
"This projection is crucial as it shows that there is still room to try to control the third wave. The third wave is very challenging to manage. Hence, we need to enhance control measures."
He said all efforts should be continued and doubled and movement control should be tightened and the people should help the country by staying at home.
"The Covid-19 infection chain must be broken. As mentioned earlier, if the infection chain can be broken it will control the transmission and the R0 value will also drop lower than 1.0 to less than 0.3."
Dr Noor Hisham said the R0 value stood at 3.5 at the start of the first wave on March 18 and was reduced to 0.3 due to positive measures - the MCO and public compliance to the SOPs.
"As of July 16, the R0 was at 0. Malaysia started to record a high R0 value on Sept 7 at 1.7 following the spike in cases in Kedah and Sabah.
"The high R0 in the two states greatly affected the nationwide R0 value. The R0 value then was unstable and remained above 1."
He said the cooperation of all parties was essential to once again flatten the curve.
"The previously implemented MCO has been able to flatten this curve quickly, but it also had a huge impact on the country's economy.
"To compensate for this situation, the approach taken by the government was to implement CMCO in several states where there is still movement for the economic sector but subject to strict compliance with SOPs.
"This approach is expected to control the transmission of Covid-19 and will also be able to flatten the curve, although it may take some time to achieve this," he added.