KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 12 — Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah today announced that Malaysia’s Covid-19 infectivity rate, indicated by the basic reproduction number R-naught (R0), has dropped to 0.88 yesterday.

This was a 0.02 percentage point fall from 0.9 nationally the day before.

A R0 value of below 1.0 indicates that the disease is declining and will eventually die out.

On his Twitter page after midnight, Dr Noor Hisham also displayed the infectivity rate by state and Federal Territories, where Melaka had the highest R0 of 1.13.

This was followed by Selangor and Penang, both having a R0 of 1.04.

Other states which had a R0 of 1.0 and above were Sarawak, Negri Sembilan and Johor.

The remaining states and Federal Territories have all achieved a R0 of lower than 1.0, with Perlis having the lowest R0 of 0.65.

On Tuesday, Dr Noor Hisham had said the movement control order (MCO) was working to reduce the rate of infections.

He also expressed hope that the country’s R0 would soon drop to 0.6, which he termed as "manageable”.

Yesterday, Malaysia reported 3,384 Covid-19 cases and 13 deaths in the past 24 hours.