And if what our Health Director General recently said it's true, the MCO will end for good.

MCO to last no longer than a month

Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah has expressed confidence that the MCO will not extend past the Chinese New Year celebrations, which falls on 12 February.

He told Free Malaysia Today that the Health Ministry expectes the current MCO to be lifted before then as they do not intend for it to last more than four weeks.

Once the MCO is lifted, Dr Noor Hisham added, the country are likely to be placed under Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO) for a period of three months or so.

The week of 4 February, the date the current MCO was scheduled to end, will be our third week in lockdown, and the Health Ministry is looking to tag on another week to make it four, and that will take it to the beginning of the CNY celebrations.

“After the cases stabilise at around 3,000 a day, we hope to see a decrease in cases in another two weeks.

"If we impose the MCO for four weeks, followed by a CMCO after that, maybe we can achieve daily double-digit cases by May,” he was quoted as saying.

Situation is improving

Since the second MCO was announced, the COVID-19 situation has been gradually improving.

Dr Noor Hisham told Malay Mail in a seperate report that the country's infection rate, or known as R0 (R Naught), had improved slightly from 1.2 to 1.06 on Monday (25 January).

On top of that, the number of daily reported cases has been stabilising the past week.

Despite recording an additional 3,048 cases on Monday, it is the lowest across the last 10 days - the same period which also saw Malaysia recording a record-high of 4.275 cases on Saturday (23 January).

If the numbers continue to hover around the 3,000 mark or lower this week, Dr Noor Hisham is confident that the situation will stabilise soon.

And if everything goes according to plan, the numbers could go back down to double digits by May, he added.