Daily Covid-19 numbers won’t be announced separately anymore, says Khairy
theedgemarkets.com
February 17, 2022
KUALA LUMPUR (Feb 17): The government said it will stop releasing daily Covid-19 numbers separately every afternoon to reduce the fear factor about the jump in infections.
The daily figure will instead be provided along with other data such as hospital occupancy rates, utilisation of intensive care, daily deaths and the breakdown of Covid 19 patients by category.
The change will be effective Friday (Feb 18), said Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin at a press conference on Thursday.
"The daily case c
ount will not be announced in the afternoon [on Friday] but will be released along with other data on Saturday at 10am.
“[This is] so that we can read the daily case numbers along with other data such as hospitalisation and so on, to reduce the fear factor of daily cases on a daily basis,” he said.
“We should look at it [daily cases] along with other metrics to get a clearer picture of the real situation, instead of looking at 20,000 or 30,000 cases every day,” he added.
Khairy said this method of providing daily Covid-19 updates is common in other countries.
"Singapore, for example, announces their case numbers at midnight,” he said.
