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To ease SOPs or not depends on risk metric, says health minister

Dr Adham Baba says the metric will take into consideration factors such as the daily infectivity rate, number of deaths and capacity of frontliners.

Farhira Farudin
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Personnel from the police and armed forces monitor SOP compliance at the Air Itam market in George Town, Penang, today. Photo: Bernama
Personnel from the police and armed forces monitor SOP compliance at the Air Itam market in George Town, Penang, today. Photo: Bernama

The government today said any decision to ease the SOPs of the total lockdown under the movement control order (MCO) if the daily number of Covid-19 infections drops below 4,000 will be based on the health ministry’s risk metric.

Health Minister Dr Adham Baba said the metric would take into consideration many factors before the MCO conditions are eased.

These include the daily infectivity rate, the number of deaths, the positivity rate and the capacity of frontline workers and hospitals.

“Based on the risk metric, we agreed that a total lockdown would be implemented if we reached 8,000 cases and above.

“We would implement MCO for 4,000 to 8,000 daily cases,” he said at a press conference today. “These are the metrics used to help us plan the public health actions that need to be taken, including increasing our vaccination capacity.”

Senior Minister for Security Ismail Sabri Yaakob previously said the government would look into whether to continue or relax the lockdown SOPs if the daily number of new cases drops to below 4,000.

“It does not mean we will end the MCO but we may review the SOPs to determine which ones can be relaxed a bit,” he had said, adding that the ministry would advise the National Security Council at its upcoming meeting.

“We do not promise to end it or anything else, but are just getting advice,” he had said.

The lockdown declared on June 1 was originally scheduled to end on June 14. However, it was recently extended until the end of the month given the continued trend of around or above 5,000 new cases reported each day.