• Life has largely returned to normal in the city of 11 million, even as the rest of the world grapples with the spread of the virus’ more contagious variants.
  
• Efforts to vaccinate people for COVID-19 have been frustrated by disarray and limited supplies in some places. The scourge has killed more than 2 million people worldwide.
  
• Wuhan accounted for the bulk of China’s 4,635 deaths from COVID-19, a number that has largely stayed static for months.
  

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 20 — The first week of the movement control order (MCO) has not brought the needed reprieve for Malaysia’s besieged healthcare system, with Covid-19 cases not only remaining high but also expected to climb further.

In his latest briefing on the country’s Covid-19 situation when he reported 3,631 more infections, Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah warned the country that daily case numbers would still rise in coming days.

Critically, he also disclosed that the number of category four and five Covid-19 patients — those with respiratory infections requiring ventilators and those critically ill with accompanying organ issues — were now five times what they had been at the height of last year’s second wave.

The two categories as well as patients with severe acute respiratory infections in category three must be hospitalised for treatment, adding further pressure to the country’s capacity to accommodate active cases that were now just a hair under 40,000.


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