Covid-19 Order Extended to 30 June 2024; Health Minister announces five point strategy to address increase in Covid-19 cases

27 December 2023

The Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases (Declaration of Infected Local Areas) Order 2020 [P.U.(A) 87/2020] (“Infected Local Areas Order”), whereby all States and Federal Territories of Malaysia were declared as infected areas of the Covid-19 virus for the initial period 18 March 2020 to 31 March 2020, will be further extended for the period 1 January 2024 to 30 June 2024 upon the coming into force of the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases (Declaration of Infected Local Areas) (Extension of Operation) (No. 2) Order 2023 [P.U.(A) 392/2023] on 1 January 2024.

This is the 14^th time the operation of the Infected Local Areas Order has been extended. The Infected Local Areas Order was gazetted on 17 March 2020 in light of the implementation of the country’s first movement control order on 18 March 2020 to control the spread of the Covid-19 virus.

On 18 December 2023, the Minister of Health Malaysia, Datuk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad, announced the Ministry’s five-point Covid-19 management strategy to tackle the recent increase in Covid-19 cases in the country, namely:

Strategy 1: Early detection of Covid-19 and the SARS Cov-2 variants via the Heightened Alert System and community surveillance;
Strategy 2: Community empowerment via the TRIIS (test, report, isolate, inform and seek) system;
Strategy 3: Monitoring of health facilities, and case management and monitoring to protect the high-risk segment of society;
Strategy 4: Community empowerment via effective risk communication; and
Strategy 5: Digitalisation of the Malaysian healthcare system in pandemic management using the MySejahtera application.¹

On the same day, the Minister of Health also announced that the Malaysian Government has presently no plans to reinstate the Covid-19 restrictions under the movement control order that was first implemented on 18 March 2020.

Alert prepared by Tan Wei Liang (Senior Associate) of Skrine.

¹ The MySejahtera application is an application developed by the Malaysian Government to assist in monitoring the Covid-19 situation in the country.

This alert contains general information only. It does not constitute legal advice nor an expression of legal opinion and should not be relied upon as such. For further information, kindly contact skrine@skrine.com.

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Covid-19 Order Extended to 30 June 2024; Health Minister announces five point strategy to address increase in Covid-19 cases