THE Health Ministry is planning adopt its efforts in reducing the R-naught or rate of Covid-19 infection in Kedah, in Sabah, to stop transmissions in the east Malaysian state, said Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah. 

The director-general of health said Kedah’s R-naught (R0) had improved tremendously from previous months and now is showing positive signs by recording fewer positive daily cases. 

“Kedah is doing very well. The R0 is at 0.7.

“The R0 of 0.7 includes those (cases) in the prison. So, if we exclude prison cases, then the figure will be less than that.

“So, we believe that whatever we have done for Kedah to contain the infection, is exactly what we are going to do for Sabah as well,” he said in a press conference at Putrajaya today.  

Malaysia today recorded 732 new infections, while Sabah recorded the highest number of daily cases, at 535 or 73.1% of today’s cases.  

This would be the 15th consecutive day Sabah has recorded the highest number of cases, and the state’s total since the onset of the pandemic now stands at 9,281.

Selangor also recorded the second highest number of new cases today, at 116 or 15.8% of new infections today. The state’s total number of cases is now 3,965.

Noor Hisham said Sabah now records a R0 value of 1.3, while Selangor records 1.4.

He said that screening, public health intervention as well as surveillance are being done vigorously on the ground in Sabah. 

He also said since the implementation of the conditional movement-control order (CMCO), the nation has shown overall improvement with a reduced R0 figure.  

Malaysia’s R0 value is now at 1.2, down from 2.2 at the start of the second CMCO. 

“For the last two days, I was shown, it was around 1.5 and today, when I looked at the R0 for the whole country, we have actually reduced it to 1.2,” he said. – October 21, 2020.