DG Noor Hisham Predicts 8,000 Daily COVID-19 Cases by March Instead of May 2021

By JUICE Malaysia  •  20 Jan 2021 in News

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At the beginning of the year, DG Noor Hisham predicted that the daily COVID-19 cases would reach 8,000 by May.

Now, the Health director-general expects it to reach those staggering numbers by the third week of March.

This estimation is based on the projection by the Health Ministry on the current infectivity rate, or R-Naught (R0), of 1.2.

Currently the number of daily cases fluctuates between 3,000 to 4,000.

Noor Hisham said, “Based on the projection of infectivity rate between Sept 12 (last year) and May 31, the R-Naught yesterday (Monday) was 1.16 with 3,306 cases. Today, we recorded 3,361 new cases, exceeding the projected R0 1.2.

“If we look at the projection of R-Naught, we predict the number of COVID-19 daily cases will reach 5,000 in the third week of February and 8,000 in the third week of March.”

He continued by saying that results of the second implementation of MCO has yet to be seen, as cases continue to rise.

With that, the SOPs of the MCO might need to be enhanced depending on the number of COVID-19 cases in the next few days.