Wear your masks, avoid crowded places, Khairy tells Malaysians

KUALA LUMPUR • Malaysia Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin has advised the public to keep their face masks on and avoid crowded places as the Covid-19 infectivity rate rises.

In a tweet yesterday, he said the country's Rt rate - the reproduction number that shows how quickly the virus multiplies - is now at 1.04. "Senior citizens, especially, should get their booster jabs when it's available to them. Practise #TRIIS," he posted.

TRIIS stands for "test, report, isolate, inform and seek", a government strategy to curtail the spread of Covid-19.

Earlier, the Health Ministry advised the public not to hesitate to take Comirnaty vaccine booster shots to protect themselves, regardless of the vaccine they were administered before this.

With the rising infectivity rate in the country, the Health Ministry has warned that the public must do their part in protecting themselves and the community.

Health director-general Noor Hisham Abdullah had said that through studies, the heterologous (or mixing) approach has been shown to be effective in offering protection.

It was understood that many recipients who were fully vaccinated using CoronaVac by Sinovac had been hesitant to receive the booster shot as it was not the same type of vaccine.

Comirnaty is manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech.

The R0 (R-naught) in Malaysia rose to 1.0 on Nov 11, five weeks after interstate travel was allowed. If the R value is 1, for example, it means that on average, 10 infected persons will spread Covid-19 to 10 others.

An R value higher than 1 means that the number of cases will increase.

If the R value falls below 1, the disease will eventually stop spreading as there will not be enough new infected persons to sustain the outbreak.

The last time the country's R value was above 1 was on Aug 31 this year.

The country's infectivity rate had been on a downward trend after late July, but it has been inching up since Oct 20.

THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK