Will MCO be extended? PM to make an announcement at 4pm today

[ UPDATE 10/4/2020 16:10 ] The Prime Minister has announced that the MCO has been extended until 28th April.

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Malaysia Prime Minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, will be making a special announcement this afternoon at 4pm. He is expected to provide an update on the current Movement Control Order which is tentatively scheduled to end on 14th April 2020.

As shared by the Health Director-General, the government will decide if the MCO will be lifted or extended today. The special announcement will be streamed live at 4pm across multiple platforms including RTM, Bernama TV, TV3 and Astro Awani.

After 24 days since the MCO was announced, Malaysia is already seeing positive signs in its efforts to contain the COVID-19 outbreak. As of yesterday, there are a total of 4,228 confirmed cases and 1,608 have recovered so far. Unfortunately, there are 67 deaths reported and the current mortality rate is 1.58%, which is among the lowest in the world.

Although the number of daily new cases have dropped and there are more recoveries, the number of new infections is still above 100 per day. We are still not out of the woods yet and there are more areas that are declared as red zones. On top of that, there are concerns that Malaysia isn’t ramping up its testing capabilities fast enough compared to other nations.

There’s a high possibility that the MCO will be extended further but the authorities could lift restrictions for selected industries. We will find out more at 4pm.