KUCHING, June 26 — Parti Sarawak Bersatu (PSB) presidential council member See Chee How urges Sarawakians play a more active role in battling the Covid-19 pandemic as the movement control order (MCO) has failed to stop the spread of the virus.
“My hope is rested on all Sarawakians to play a bigger and more active role to battle the pandemic in Sarawak. We must go back to the very basic of staying home as much as possible, take all protective precautions when at work, and totally stop and avoid any congregation.
“If all Sarawakians can stay safe from Covid-19 infection and help to promote the tenet of “Protect ourselves, Protect Everyone”, we can save the country and Sarawak,” he said during a PSB Southern Zone Taskforce Live Facebook session yesterday.
< kch-bp250621-ic-seemco-p2.png A graph comparing the national Covid-19 cases and cases in Sarawak.>
The figures of daily infected cases showed that there is improvement on the national front, over the four weeks, a reduction of 19.24 per cent cases from the first week to the second week and continuous reduction of 10.38 per cent and 3.45 per cent for the last two weeks, he said.
However, in Sarawak, there were marginal reduction of cases 1.71 per cent and 3.81 per cent initially, but an increase of 0.17 per cent in this past week, he added.
See cautioned that the little improvement, on the national front, is however illusory and deceptive.
He pointed out there was also a significant decrease in the number of tracing and testing in Malaysia, from more than 100,000 “trace and test” daily, prior to this present lockdown, to less than 80,000 a day over the past week.
“The pattern is obvious when we compare it with the number of tracing and testing that we have carried out in the country before and during the current lockdown.”
It is certainly not a coincidence that when the “tracing and testing” was at its highest, 126,480, was also when the country recorded the highest number of Covid-19 cases, at 9,020 on May 29, he said.
He cited Code Blue, a Malaysian portal that promotes health care as a human right, which keeps track of weekly “tracing and testing” and weekly “new Covid-19 cases” showing the national weekly Covid-19 positive rate is between 6.61 and 6.93 within the period.
“When more “tracing and testing” is being carried out, we will have found more new Covid-19 cases. Conversely, it is true that we can bring down the daily new Covid-19 cases if we conduct less “tracing and testing”,” said See.
“Sarawak is worse off because our daily new Covid-19 cases remain high when our numbers of “tracing and testing” have been lowered over the past month. So, we are only kidding ourselves if we say that the MCO lockdown has yielded results.”
Meanwhile, the federal government has devised the National Recovery Plan (NRP) as the country’s exit strategy which is said to consist of four phases of the MCO — uses indicators for phase transition based on the number of daily Covid-19 cases, occupancy of intensive care unit (ICU) beds, and the rates of vaccination, he said.
See added that the government is acknowledging that the Covid-19 will be prevalent in Malaysia the foreseeable future as a minister conceded that the use of the term “herd immunity” should be avoided despite it being the main target of the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (NIP), he pointed out.
See, who is also Batu Lintang assemblyman, said that with the NRP, the focus is no longer on the lockdown to contain the spread of the virus and to get on top of the pandemic.
Thus, more economic sectors will be opened despite the rise and predominance of workplace clusters amongst the “essential sectors” that are allowed to operate, he said.
“Very soon, a minister will take the cue that the Covid-19 would become endemic in the country and we will have to live with it for the foreseeable future, and he will go further to say that we are unable to sustain the lockdown as our country’s economy will collapse.”
“I do not expect the government, whether federal or state, to admit that they have mismanaged and are unable to contain the spread of the virus.” — Borneo Post Online
