KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 21 — The movement control order (MCO) will be extended to February 4 for the states and all federal territories first locked down this month, Senior Defence Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob announced today.

The extension meant the MCO will expire in all states except Sarawak on the same date. Sarawak is under the conditional MCO.

The states and federal territories affected are Selangor, Melaka, Penang, Johor, Sabah, Kelantan, Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Labuan.

"For now, we will extend these states till February 4 first to standardise the date with other states that also started to observe MCO recently, so that if we decide to further extend in future it will be easier to synchronise.

"This decision was made to further extend as the 14 days observation by the Ministry of Health (MOH) from January 7 to 20 showed positive Covid-19 infections continue to soar within the local community.

"In Selangor particularly, earlier we thought cases were high among foreigners, but actually cases within the local community are soaring high,” he said in his daily security briefing this evening.

Ismail Sabri said the decision to extend the MCO was made after MOH revealed that the risk assessment for these states remain worrying, with local community infections failing to show any signs of improvement.

In the two-week assessment from January 7 to 20, Selangor recorded more than 1,000 new cases daily, followed by Kuala Lumpur (4,413), Johor (5,665), Sabah (6,027) ,Kelantan (1,208), Penang (2,310), Melaka (2,370), Putrajaya (294) and Labuan (151).