PUTRAJAYA, April 24 — COVID-19 infectivity rate in the community is now less than one, says Health Director-General Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.
He said the Health Ministry’s modelling on the disease’s infectivity is quantified by a figure called ‘RO’, which is pronounced ‘R-Naught’.
“The RO before the Movement Control Order (MCO) was about 3.55, which means one individual will infect 3.55 people.
“But now after April 14, we have brought down the RO to less than one,” he said at the daily media conference on COVID-19, here today.
Meanwhile, Dr Noor Hisham said that the total number of Covid-19 active infectivity cases was 1,932, adding that the patients were being continuously monitored and only discharged once they tested negative.
He said it was also important for the people to remain at home to help further reduce the infectivity rate in the country.
“Today the (number of new) cases has been reduced to two digits, but we hope in a week or two, we will able to reduce it further. By doing so, we can actually control the COVID-19 infection in our hospitals and community,” he said.
Meanwhile, Dr Noor Hisham said the Health Ministry was now testing 13,614 samples a day, up from the initial 11,500, and trying to push it up to 16,385 per day through 43 laboratories.
He added that two centres, namely the Institute for Medical Research (IMR) and Public Health Laboratory in Kota Kinabalu will be getting automated machines from the Beijing Genomics Institute, which will help increase testing capacity by another 6,000 tests per day.
— BERNAMA