The resulting simulation of COVID-adjusted HDI in 2020 shows a decline of the Malaysia HDI score from 0.810 in 2019 to 0.797, a contraction of 1.6 per cent. Nonetheless, because the level of HDI has been relatively stable for Malaysia, which had increased by only 0.55 per cent on average between 2010 to 2019, even a minor reduction can drastically bring the HDI down to previous levels of development. In the Malaysian case, the projection result is equivalent to erasing progress made in human development over the past five years, back to 2015 (0.796). This is only one year less than the six years global HDI setback estimated by the UN HDRO using the same principles of adjustments.