Malaysia to Use Hospital Cases as Gauge for Easing Covid Curbs

(Bloomberg) -- Malaysia will shift to using the number of new symptomatic Covid-19 hospital admissions as a gauge for whether to ease curbs in states in the first phase of its National Recovery Plan, the Finance Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

The indicator will replace the current measure -- daily Covid-19 cases -- if a state’s level of full vaccinations with a double dose reaches 50% of adults, Finance Minister Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz said in the statement.

The decision was made on the advice of domestic and overseas health experts who said the transmission risk decrease as vaccinations increase among adults, he said.

The change could affect the pace of restriction relaxation in Kuala Lumpur, the capital, and the industrial state of Selangor, where the vaccination rate is relatively high. Both areas are recording the most daily infections, contributing almost 50% of 19,257 new cases on Saturday.

Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, together with the administrative capital of Putrajaya, had 47.7% of its adult population, or 2.94 million people, fully vaccinated as of Friday, according to the official Twitter account of the Special Committee for Ensuring Access to Covid-19 Vaccine Supply, citing data from the Covid-19 Immunization Task Force. The combined three areas are called Klang Valley in Malaysia.

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