KUALA LUMPUR, June 6 — Malaysia is seeing the trend of sudden increases in COVID-19 new cases and deaths from the viral infection, especially after April 1 this year, says Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.
He said this situation was very worrying because the majority of the new cases and deaths were sporadic ones when reported.
Dr Noor Hisham said sporadic cases meant cases that were detected within communities and could not be linked to any existing cases or clusters.
“The Ministry of Health (MOH) is urging the public to take this situation seriously as the spread of COViD -19 is within communities including at the shopping complexes, workplaces and so on.
“They need to understand that anyone could be infected with COVID-19 wherever they are. As a result, we can see the increase in sporadic cases and fatalities within communities,” he said in a statement today.
Dr Noor Hisham said based on the analysis, the number of such cases remained high during the 22nd epidemiology week until June 5 with 52,040 new cases recorded and 84.3 per cent of these being sporadic cases.
“It shows a clear increase from the 8,968 new cases with 52 per cent being sporadic cases from the 13th epidemiology week or until April 3,” he added.
Dr Noor Hisham also noted that the cumulative fatal cases from COVID-19 also rose from week to week, namely, from the 22nd epidemiology week with 641 cases recorded including 559 sporadic cases compared to 35 fatalities including 26 sporadic ones in the 13th epidemiology week or until April 3.
“One of the factors contributing to this situation was the emergence of new variants of the virus within communities with higher infectivity and fatality rates, besides the wider spread of COVID-19 within communities compared to the previous epidemiology week.
Dr Noor Hisham said the public should continue to be consistent in complying with the standard operating procedure (SOP) and the government’s call for them to stay home and only go out when necessary.
“They are encouraged to wear double face masks, especially in crowded public places with poor ventilation and also a face shield at high-risk public places like hospitals and clinics,” he added.
