KUALA LUMPUR, April 23 — Malaysia’s daily Covid-19 cases may return to heights not seen since the peak of the "third wave” due to non-compliance with preventive standard operating procedures, according to Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah.

In a post disclosing that the effective reproduction rate (rt) of Covid-19 was now 1.16, the Health director-general also shared the Health Ministry’s projections for new cases until the end of May.

While the Health Ministry had previously targeted for new cases to reach 500 daily in May, its projection for "non-compliance to SOPs” was for over 5,000 cases a day just before the end of the month.

The peak would also likely be higher without intervention but the projection graph terminates at the end of May.

The ministry’s second projection for "compliance with SOPs” showed its original target of new cases dropping to and below 500 daily at the same time.

However, the rate of actual case growth was now tracking the projection for "non-compliance to SOPs”, with a current daily average of over 2,200 or higher than what was projected for the period now.

The federal government both imposed a movement control order (MCO) and issued a proclamation of Emergency in January when the so-called "third wave” was nearing its peak.

Cases had declined as a result, dropping as low as 941 at the end of March.

Since then, however, new infections have climbed steadily and hovered over 2,000 cases a day since April 15.

For the moment, compliance with preventive SOPs remains the country’s only option to curtail the rise as the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines was still slow, with fewer than 500,000 people from the country’s population of over 33 million having been fully vaccinated so far.