PETALING JAYA: Malaysia's Covid-19 infectivity rate (R value) has gone up to 1.0, signalling a possible rise in cases in the days ahead.

       Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah in a post on his Facebook page at about 4am Tuesday (June 29) wrote that the country's R value recorded a figure of 1.0 for June 28.

       The R value refers to the number of people that a person who has the coronavirus will infect.

       If the R value is 1 for example, it means that on average, one infected person will spread Covid-19 to one other individual.

       An R value higher than 1 means that the number of cases will increase.

       If the R value falls - especially below 1 - the disease will eventually stop spreading as not enough new people are being infected to sustain the outbreak.

       Malaysia's R value went up from early March, then gradually fell since May 23.

       It has remained below 1 since June 5, but started climbing again since June 12.

       The number of daily Covid-19 cases in Malaysia hit a high of 9,020 on May 29 before gradually falling.

       Since then, the number of daily cases in Malaysia has hovered above 5,000 for the past six days.