KUALA LUMPUR, June 3 — Malaysia’s seven-day average for Covid-19 cases has remained steady near 7,500 for the fourth consecutive day, suggesting that the latest surge from the ongoing third wave has peaked.

According to data Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah released this morning, the effective reproduction number (Rt) for Covid-19 has also declined again.

"The Covid-19 infectivity rate, or R0/Rt, predicted from daily cases on June 2 for the entire country is 1.06,” he said.

Rt measures the average number of people from the remaining vulnerable population that each new Covid-19 patient could infect. It must be under 1.0 in order for Covid-19 to be suppressed.

Yesterday, Malaysia reported 7,703 new Covid-19 infections, nearly a tenth higher than the previous day but also the second day of increased numbers.

However, the past four days represent the longest period that the rolling-average has stayed flat since the start of May, when the government began imposing various movement control orders in an attempt to respond to the country’s worsening Covid-19 situation.

One caveat to the flattening average was the country’s persistently high positivity rate, which again exceeded the World Health Organization’s benchmark to gauge if countries were testing enough for Covid-19.

Yesterday, Malaysia’s positivity rate was 7.68 per cent from 100,288 tests performed.

The WHO recommends a positivity rate of 5 per cent, with higher figures indicating possible under-reporting of cases due to insufficient testing.