THE movement control order (MCO) will not end on Monday, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has announced.

He said the MCO will continue until the threshold value of new Covid-19 cases reported a day drops to less than 4,000, Bernama reported today.

The prime minister said the government will announce more comprehensive assistance to all groups of society on Monday or Tuesday. The country entered current total lockdown began on June 1 and was supposed to last until June 14, but has now been extended twice.

“Now they say the movement-control order (MCO) is about to end. I want to say that from now on we don’t call it MCO, but we say we are in a particular phase and now we are in phase one of the recovery plan until July, maybe middle of the month or so.

“It is wrong to say June 28 is the end of the MCO. 

“I want to say we are still in the first phase of the national recovery plan, and this will continue until the threshold value of below 4,000 cases is reached, cases in the intensive care unit have dropped from the critical level and vaccinations have increased,” he told reporters after visiting the vaccination centre at the Sunway Pyramid Convention today. 

Muhyiddin added that phase one was to test the country’s resilience so that it could go through all the phases smoothly.

On June 15, Muhyiddin announced the national recovery plan to steer the country out of the Covid-19 pandemic.

He said the plan was divided into four phases with the current lockdown being the first phase where daily Covid-19 cases remain high and the healthcare system is at full capacity. The vaccination rate is also still low.

Phase two will be implemented when cases fall below 4,000 and 10% of the population has been vaccinated.

Phase three will be implemented when numbers fall below 2,000 a day and 40% have been vaccinated, while phase four will take place when cases fall below 500 daily and 60% have received both doses of the vaccine.

He projected that phase three would be expected to begin in September or October, while phase four in November.

By yesterday, the pandemic had claimed 4,884 lives in Malaysia.

Director-general of health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said there was a marginal decrease in the number of intensive care unit admissions to 866. Of this number, 435 are on respiratory support.

He said new cases outnumbered recoveries with 5,803 new infections against 5,193 recoveries.

With this, the cumulative total of recoveries now stood at 662,932, while the national caseload is up to 728,462.

Active cases, on the other hand, stood at 60,646.

The government has ramped up its vaccination drive and up to yesterday 7,226,949 doses had been administered nationwide, said Health Minister Dr Adham Baba.

Of this figure, he said 5,204,993 people had received their first shots, while 2,021,956 people had received their second dose. – June 27, 2021.