KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 21 — The Covid-19 situation in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor and Putrajaya is under control despite the daily high infection rates, Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah assured residents in the central region today.

He said the current high cases were well within the Health Ministry’s expectations after the third wave broke out in Sabah back in September.

He was responding to Malaysian Public Health Physicians Association president Datuk Dr Zainal Ariffin Omar who suggested that the Klang Valley could turn into the next Sabah if the daily new cases maintained its current trajectory.

The Health director-general added that the ministry is able to deal with the cases in the Klang Valley after having managed the outbreaks in Penang and Kedah previously.

Dr Noor Hisham also said the best method to stop the contagion were to continue the current targeted approaches of identifying the infected areas and contain it there through the conditional movement control orders (CMCO) and targeted enhanced movement control orders (TEMCO).

"When cases started to increase in Klang Valley, we implemented the EMCO and the TEMCO as well as the CMCO, as we predicted infections will rise here due to the density of the population.

"People asked us if this was successful. If we did not do it, we would be seeing upwards of four million people with Covid-19 infections,” said Dr Noor Hisham today during his Covid-19 briefing broadcasted from Putrajaya.

"Look at Sarawak and how the R-naught (R0) dropped to 0.4 now while at one point in Semporna for every ten individuals tested, seven would return positive. Now there are only 10 cases in Semporna.

"What we are doing here is what we have done in Kedah, Sabah and Sarawak and that’s how we make sure cases do not spiral out of control.”

Selangor has steadily been recording infections in the thousands and today another 1,204 new cases.

Malaysia’s daily cases jumped to 2,018 today, the country’s third highest number recorded in a single day.

However, Dr Noor Hisham attributed the daily spike to the mandatory Covid-19 screening for foreign workers and added that most cases involved them at their workplaces.

He said the mandatory screening at construction sites and factories employing large numbers of foreigners has been helpful in curbing Covid-19.

"With these continued efforts hopefully in the next month or two we will see the impact and a decrease in cases,” said Dr Noor Hisham.

The R0 in Malaysia is now at 0.97. Dr Noor Hisham said their goal is to get it to the low 0.5 to 0.4.