KUALA LUMPUR: The Health Ministry today indicates that Malaysia has the likelihood to join the long list of countries being hit by the more transmissible Omicron Covid-19 variant.
Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said via Twitter that this was a high possibility, while quoting the tweet earlier made by Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah saying that the country's Covid-19 infectivity rate (Rt) rose to 0.99 as of Saturday.
"A wider booster shot coverage, wearing face masks, good ventilation, #TRIIS, MySJ Trace, and international border control are amongst ways to slow down the spread of Omicron.
"Some refers to data that Omicron not as bad as Delta. It seems that way, but Omicron is more transmissible than Delta. If the case denominator is larger, definitely the hospitalisation and ICU admissions will increase.
"The Health Ministry wants to avoid the collapse of the healthcare system," he said today.
To avoid such circumstances, Khairy stressed that the sensible strategy was to slow down the spread of the Omicron variant.
The infectivity rate of the country is steadily rising since Dec 26.
As of Dec 31, Malaysia has detected 64 Covid-19 cases of Omicron variant.
Sixty three of the cases were imported infections while one was a suspected local case.