Muhyiddin Yassin to address the nation at 9pm tonight, RMCO to be extended?

[ UPDATE 1/1/2021 01:50 ]: It appears that RMCO rules have been extended until 31st March 2021. More details here.

[ UPDATE 31/12/2020 23:00 ]: The Prime Minister and National Security Council have yet to provide an update on the RMCO. So what happens on 1st January 2021?

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Before the year is out, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin will address the nation this evening in conjunction with the new year. Apart from the 2021 new year greeting, the Prime Minister is likely to provide an update for the current movement control order.

The announcement is happening at 9pm this evening (31st December 2020) and it will be streamed live through multiple platforms including RTM, Bernama TV, TV3 and Astro Awani. 

At the moment, the national level Recovery Movement Control Order (RMCO) is set to end today and it is likely that the Prime Minister will announce an extension. The current RMCO extension was announced on 28th August and it pushed the end date by 4 months from 31st August to 31st December 2020. Malaysia has been placed under movement control order for 288 days since the first phase started on 18th March 2020.

On Monday, the National Security Council has announced an extension to the Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO) for Sabah, Kuala Lumpur and Selangor until the 14th of January 2021. Although interstate travel is permitted, certain activities are still prohibited including international travel. For those travelling to Sarawak, the state government still requires a mandatory quarantine but with a shorter 10-day duration.

As of yesterday, Malaysia has recorded a total of 110,485 COVID-19 cases with 463 deaths reported so far. Malaysia continues to record an average of over 1,000 new cases daily since November 2020.

We are still not out of the woods yet as Malaysia currently has a record high of 22,562 active cases remaining as of 12pm on 30th December 2020. With more patients being treated, the Health D-G Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah has advised new COVID-19 cases to isolate at home rather than going to a hospital. The high number of new cases reported lately is mainly due to aggressive COVID-19 testing on foreign workers.

Despite the high daily numbers, the current infectivity rate is 1.05 but there’s still not much progress in lowering the rate to less than 0.5

[ SOURCE ]

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