APRIL 28 — Bravo and congratulation to our MoH’s team and front-liners for the job well-done to contain the spread of novel coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in our country. A special thank you to our national hero, Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah, who is at the forefront of the war to fight against the Covid-19’s pandemic.
Amid the current downward trend in the daily new cases of reported coronavirus infections, there still remains a major cause of concern to all. Data released yesterday showed that Malaysia reported a staggering 5,820 confirmed cases with a death toll at 99, while active cases stood at 1,764.
“We aren’t sure if we will lift the MCO,” was the response from Dr Noor Hisham in his daily briefing last week, before the PM announced the extension of the MCO yet again to May 12.
Balik kampung exodus
Looking back fondly to one and a half months ago when the MCO was first came into effect on March 18, 2020, there appeared to be some sorts of miscommunication, lack of coordination, and inconsistencies, among the ministries and agencies.
At the very outset before the lockdown kicked in, the pre-lockdown announcement of the MCO Phase 1 had triggered the balik kampung exodus among the city folks on the eve of the said MCO. According to health experts, this may trigger a new wave of infections as city folks have travelled from areas with high infections to low-infection areas.
Then came the misinterpretation among the Klang Valley’s folks on what constitutes an inter-states travel following the announcement by the police that inter-state travels require permission from the police.
The general public who wished to travel within the Klang Valley and across states were both seen making beelines at the police station to apply for travel permission. These have somewhat caused quite a massive jam at the police stations.
In the initial phase of MCO too, there were some issues relating to essential items cropping up although they have all now been resolved. The face masks were out of stock with many local residents could not get hold of it.
Then, there were irresponsible and profiteering traders who have taken advantage of the health crisis to spike up prices of face masks and other essentials too which later have alerted the authorities to impose a maximum price control scheme for these essentials.
Another disappointing development was when the government has to appeal to the Sri Petaling’s Tabligh participants to come forward for health screening and testing.
Lack of knowledge and understanding about Covid-19
Besides the Health D-G, it would appear as if the general public and the government officials alike require further education about the virus, its infectivity, and its preventive measures.
The general public should be recommended and educated to wear a face mask in a crowded area so as to reduce the risk of infecting each other simply because over 80 per cent of Malaysia’s Covid-19 patients were either asymptomatic or only displayed mild symptoms.
The former deputy health minister is right to suggest that we should assume everyone is a possible carrier of the virus, hence wearing a face mask is highly recommendable to reduce the risks of transmission as the disease is highly contagious.
Then, along the way, there were incidents where high-ranking officials were seen visiting and distributing aids to schools besides eating in group without observing social-distancing. This occurred amidst a more stringent and stricter MCO enforced by the police where the public who were caught flouting it might face a jail sentence, and not the RM1,000 fine as it used to be.
There was also an episode where a current minister blamed the previous PH government for the second wave of the outbreak as he questioned why the Sri Petaling Tabligh’s mass gathering has been given the green light to proceed.
After that, during the initial period of MCO Phase 3, there was a decision taken to roll back an earlier decision to allow barbers, hair salons and optical shops to operate under the current lockdown.
As has been announced last Friday’s night by the PM that the MCO will be further extended until May 12, many obedient and compliant citizens of this country would ask if we are on the right track as the numbers of new cases were fluctuating up and down in the past one week, despite on a double-digit down trend.
According to the PM in a live telecast, every single day of shutting down comes with a price tag of RM2.4 billion in lost revenues to the nation.
Logically, any rational person would ask if we are utilising the productive weeks lost to the national shutdown, in a way that could achieve some meaningful target, namely to achieve the single-digit new cases or perhaps zero new cases.
Another question that may arise is do we have the financial muscle and fiscal strength to roll out more stimulus packages to help the public and businesses to weather through and ride out from the crisis, given the prolonged lockdown?
I personally think the key message and target from the Health D-G is pretty clear, namely the number of daily new cases should be reduced to a single digit in order for us to be certain that the virus has been contained and suppressed successfully.
We may have to be cautioned with the possibility of triggering another outbreak, following two recent announcements which are particularly worrying.
First was the government’s announcement that 100,000 university students who are stuck on their campuses are now allowed to return to their home town and this has started since yesterday.
The second announcement was related to those who had travelled back to their home towns are now allowed to return to the cities to resume work etc. The scheduled arrangement is expected to start over the week end.
What is next, after charting infections’ downward trends?
The daily Covid-19 briefing yesterday from the Health D-G shows encouraging results, with a record of only 40 new cases reported yesterday while the number of recoveries stood at 95 which was far outnumbered the new cases.
Malaysia is planning to reach higher target testing capacity of 22,000 Covid-19 tests per day.
At the moment, based on some data released recently, the country’s “test per million capita” is only about 482. This number is significantly lower than the testing conducted in Italy, Japan, South Korea and Singapore.
Tests per million people in Italy, Japan, South Korea and Singapore were at 20,926, 930, 10,862 and 16,203, respectively. With a higher tests per million people of about 10,862 tests, South Korea’s total infections is only 10,718 cases.
As our ministry is applying the targeted approach by testing only the persons under investigation, what should be of concern to us is if this will adequately cover the general populace who may be infected as there were 69 unexplained sporadic cases without any clear source of infection.
A recent report published on CNBC last week highlighted that South-east Asia could potentially become the next coronavirus hotspots. One of the key points highlighted was infections may be gone undetected due to the low testing rate in countries like Indonesia and the Philippines.
Mounting economic pressure post-MCO
Amidst mounting pressure from private businesses and SMEs alike to resume their business operations, the country may risk a sudden spike in new cases, if an MCO exit strategy is not planned carefully and executed effectively. Indeed, the government has agreed to open up more business sectors in the coming MCO Phase 4.
SMEs and private businesses have echoed a strong call for an end to the lockdown, in the wake of an estimated 1.6 million jobs lost due to the extended MCO.
Today, it appears like we are on the path for an MCO’s soft landing with a gradual and staggered re-opening up of our business sectors. However, there is no clear timeline yet for a full re-opening of the economy as well as when and how it would return to normalcy.
Even until to date, no government leaders of any country in the world has given a concrete suggestion for an exit strategy.
While we should not rush into lifting the MCO completely to avoid triggering a new wave of infections, nevertheless we should start formulating a clear, actionable, and practical plan for an exit.
As clarified by our former PM Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, we should expect much trial-and-error with the MOH’s containment effort, because there is a lot of unknowns about SARS-CoV2 virus that causes Covid-19 and that would require further study before its characteristics could be further determined.
As with the containment effort, we should expect that the exit plan to be formulated based on a “trial and error” basis too, as there is no best practices to draw reference from.
As we can see from Wuhan today, where the epidemic was originated from, it has now recorded less than 20 new daily cases and less than 1000 active cases. It has taken Wuhan at least 11 weeks of complete lockdown which observers dubbed as “brutal” restrictions.
Today, Wuhan can proudly claim that it has quite successfully wiped out the virus after enduring 11 weeks or more precisely 76 days long of complete lockdown.
As with any other crisis like the 1998-99’s Asian Financial Crisis or 2008-09’s Global Financial Crisis, the post-MCO economy will take some time to recover. Until then, social distancing will need to be strictly enforced until a vaccine is produced.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
