The Health Ministry wanted to put Selangor back under the movement control order (MCO) last month.

However, Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the government could not afford the economic ramifications, and thus opted for the less restrictive conditional MCO (CMCO)

Dr Noor Hisham said re-imposing the MCO would severely affect the country's economy.

"In Selangor, it was very challenging. Even though we took early action and implemented the CMCO on Oct 14. 40% of the country's economy are derived from Selangor, hence, the MCO's implementation would be at a great cost."

"We need to strike the right balance between life and livelihood," he said during a special briefing on Covid-19 at the ministry here today.

When asked if MCO could be imposed nationwide to cripple the spread, he said the implementation of CMCO was bearing fruit.

He said the CMCO had prevented a sudden spike in cases.

"We have managed to control the spread. Now, we hope to bring down the R-naught value to 0.5 or below and return to register between double and single-digit daily cases."

Reference Links - 
[1] Malaysiakini
[2] News Straits Times