By Najwa Yusman
KUALA LUMPUR, 9 January 2020: Minister of Health, Khairy Jamaluddin predicts that the COVID-19 cases in Malaysia will reach 30,000 cases daily if preventive measures on the Omicron variant are not taken to stop the wave.
“According to the Ministry of Health stimulation, we will see cases increase by 15,000 per day between now and February if we do not take preventive measures like suspension of Umrah travel and mandatory quarantine,” Khairy said.
He emphasised that the expected numbers were based on projections from the Ministry of Health using the susceptible, exposed, infectious, and recovered (SEIR) model with infectivity rates (R-Nought or R0) of 0.95, 1.2, and 1.6, respectively.
Khairy also stated that the temporary suspension of Umrah travel for Muslims had been one of the preventive measures imposed by the government to break the chain of infections.
“Although the Omicron variant infections were less dangerous than the Delta variant, if the number of cases increase to 30,000 daily, hospital admissions will start to escalate even though the patients might be under category 1 or 2,” he further remarked.
Khairy also told the press conference that the booster dose appointment would be given through the MySejahtera application or short message services (SMS) in administrating the booster rollout.
Individuals can register in a waiting list of Private General Practitioners Vaccination Centres (PPV-GP) listed on the ProtectHealth website***
Source: Free Malaysia Today