{"id":164496,"date":"2022-04-07T00:33:14","date_gmt":"2022-04-07T00:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/?p=164496"},"modified":"2022-04-07T00:33:18","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T00:33:18","slug":"continue-to-wear-face-masks-during-endemic-phase-says-health-dg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/?p=164496","title":{"rendered":"Continue to wear face masks during endemic phase, says Health DG"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong><em>By Muammar Hadi<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>KUALA LUMPUR, 7 April 2022: Health Director-General, Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah urged the public to stay alert against the spread of the COVID-19 virus during transition to the endemic phase by keeping your face masks on to avoid infection, according to <em>BERNAMA<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said that wearing face masks could reduce the spread of the virus, especially in high-risk areas like indoors, crowds and places with close-range interactions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Noor Hisham stated that the COVID-19 virus is still around, contagious and causes deaths, especially among the elderly, children, people with poor immune system and comorbidities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He also said the best approach would be for both the virus carrier and healthy individual to wear face masks to ensure the risk of virus transmission remains very low.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Noor Hisham said, &#8220;There is a possibility of certain individuals who are unaware that they have been infected with COVID-19 being in public areas as they are asymptomatic.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said the correct use of  face masks was to cover the nose and mouth entirely because the SARS-CoV-2 virus spreads easily through respiratory droplets. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;If there are individuals who do not wear face masks or wear them improperly, we can reprimand them nicely.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said, &#8220;Wearing face masks must be made a culture to protect our health besides physical distancing and booster dose for those who haven&#8217;t done so.&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr. Noor Hisham said new cases remained below 15,000 for the fourth consecutive day at 12,017, reaching a cumulative total of 4,268,486 cases. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The country&#8217;s infectivity rate is at 0.86 with Selangor having the highest and Kelantan having the lowest at 1.03 and 0.66 respectively. ***<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Source: BERNAMA<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Muammar Hadi KUALA LUMPUR, 7 April 2022: Health Director-General, Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah urged the public to stay alert against the spread&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9233,"featured_media":164497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,5,19,3],"tags":[],"nelio_content":{"isAutoShareEnabled":true,"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"followers":[12,156,9233],"suggestedReferences":[],"efiUrl":"","efiAlt":"","highlights":[],"permalinkQueryArgs":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/msg841538651-4648.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164496"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9233"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=164496"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164530,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164496\/revisions\/164530"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/164497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=164496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=164496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iium.edu.my\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=164496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}