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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British scientists and politicians have expressed concern that vaccines currently being deployed or in development could be less effective against the variant.

Scientists speaking at the virtual panel yesterday said there was not yet a clear answer to that question and that studies were continuing.

“We have reason to be concerned because the virus has found a way to escape from previous antibodies,” Alex Sigal, a virologist at the Africa Health Research Institute, said.

“The world has underestimated this virus. This virus can evolve, it ... is adapting to us.”