Health D-G: 28 Days Of Zero Infection Before Malaysia Can Be Declared Free Of COVID-19

At the daily COVID-19 press conference on Thursday, 11 June, Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said this is the same method applied to monitor the end of a cluster.

"Currently, to end a cluster, we monitor it for 28 days, which is two cycles of the COVID-19 incubation period," he said, as quoted by New Straits Times.

"So, we use the same method. If we register zero cases for 28 consecutive days, then we will declare that Malaysia is free from COVID-19, that's our benchmark."

20 of the newest cases are local transmissions, while the remaining 11 are imported cases involving returning Malaysians who were infected abroad.

Dr Noor Hisham said of the 20 local transmission cases, 19 involved foreign workers - 16 of them from the Pedas cluster in Negeri Sembilan, one from the Sungai Lui tahfiz cluster in Selangor, one from a Kuala Lumpur cleaning company, and another from a Kuala Lumpur construction site.

The single Malaysian case was detected in Selangor during a screening at a tahfiz school.

This brings the total cumulative cases in the country to 8,369. No new COVID-19 deaths were reported.

Out of those in the hospital, only five patients are in Intensive Care Units (ICU), and no patients require respiratory assistance.

Dr Noor Hisham said 51 patients were discharged from hospital yesterday, bringing the total number of recoveries to 7,065 and the country's recovery rate to 84.4%.