The daily number of new Covid-19 cases recorded in Malaysia has been steadily declining since hitting its peak of 5,728 cases a day on Jan 30.

However, even as authorities prepare to relax movement control order (MCO) restrictions, the decline is not uniform across all states and territories and some are even seeing a growing outbreak.

This is indicated by daily estimates of the coronavirus’ effective reproduction number (R_t) released by the Health Ministry, which is the measure of its infectivity...