Two Federal Territories, Two States In Malaysia Move To Phase 3 Under National Recovery Plan

KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 29 (Bernama) -- Two federal territories and two states in Malaysia will be transitioning from Phase Two to Phase Three under the National Recovery Plan effective Oct 1. They are federal territories of Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya and the states of Selangor and Melaka. Meanwhile, the Malaysian northern state of Kedah will be moving from Phase One to Phase Two on the same date, which also will see all states nationwide moving out of Phase One. Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob said the COVID-19 Pandemic Management Special Committee meeting Wednesday agreed to allow the phase movement of states after taking into consideration the current risk assessment of the Health Ministry (MOH) and the National Security Council (MKN). “I congratulate the Malaysian Family especially the state governments in working hard to manage the pandemic situation in their respective states to fulfill the stipulated threshold values,” he said in a statement. The states of Kedah, Penang, Perak, Kelantan, Johor and Sabah are now in Phase Two; Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya, states of Selangor, Melaka, Perlis, Pahang, Terengganu and Sarawak (Phase Three) while Negeri Sembilan state and federal territory of Labuan (Phase Four). Ismail Sabri who is also the COVID-19 Pandemic Management Special Committee chairman said Malaysia continues to record a falling trend in the COVID-19 infectivity rate (R-naught). He said, yesterday the R-naught for the whole country was 0.88 and admission of COVID-19 patients in intensive care unit (ICU) also showed a declining trend. “Based on the R-naught which remained below 1.0, the government is confident the projection of new daily COVID-19 cases will drop with the cooperation of the Malaysia Family in complying with the standard operating procedure (SOP) even though the pattern of the daily COVID-19 cases is not clear,” he said. In this regard, according to him, the National COVID-19 immunisation Programme (PICK) recorded 85.1 per cent of the adult population with complete vaccination as of Sept 28. At the same time, the Adolescent National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme (Adolescent PICK) received very encouraging response when 1,217,386 doses of vaccine were administered to adolescents aged between 12 to 17. “This development is in line with the objective of the government to have as many students completing vaccination as school session is starting in stages from October,” he said. On interstate travel, Ismail Sabri said the government would allow it when the rate of full vaccination of the adult population reaches 90 per cent as announced by him on Sept 22. The government is also considering to open more economic sectors to operate as normal to enable the people to continue living like before after the sectors were closed for so long, he said. -- BERNAMA