FROM January 2020 to March 2021, total number of COVID-19 cases recorded in our country was 345,500, averaging 23,033 monthly during these 15 months.
However, infections shot up in the subsequent three months with an average of 135,493 cases per month from April to June.
But what followed next was truly horrifying when 361,293 cases were recorded in just one month in July. Since July 13, five-digit numbers were used to register the number of COVID-19 cases daily, with the last nine days of July averaging 16,484 per day.
If this momentum is continued in the next two months, another million cases will be added in the month of August and September, taking the accumulative total to around 2,113,000 by then.
While it may be true that more than 97% of new cases have mild or no symptoms, the high number of COVID-19 cases will be among the risk factors used to determine the safety of our country as an inbound holiday destination or source market for outbound travellers.
In the latest monthly COVID-19 Resilience Ranking by Bloomberg that covers 53 countries spanning across North and South America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia Pacific, and Southeast Asia, Malaysia is ranked 52nd, or placed second from bottom, as the worst place to be as the world reopens.
While we are least interested in tourists going to other parts of the globe, we must compete for those looking at options within the Asean region. But they are more likely to head towards safer countries such as Singapore (ranked 11th), Thailand (41st), Vietnam (46th) and the Philippines (49th), but not Malaysia or Indonesia (ranked last at 53rd).
Ironically, we were ranked 16th on the same scale in January this year when Prime Minister Tan Sri Mahiaddin Yassin insisted on an Emergency to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. The state of Emergency gave the Government a free hand, but infections went up instead of down.
Lifting interstate travel restrictions will immediately boost business for the main tourism sectors, which are the retail trade, food and beverage outlets and lodging providers. Combined, they grabbed two third of the total RM92.6 bil expenditure by domestic visitors in 2019.
While budget and tourist-class hotels are affordable for domestic tourists, luxury and five-star hotels, convention and entertainment centres are largely dependent on international business executives and conference delegates travelling on corporate or deductible expenses.
Woefully, high COVID-19 cases not only deter foreigners from visiting Malaysia, but our outbound tourism will also be affected as other countries would be wary of travellers coming from Malaysia and may impose longer quarantine if allowed entry or denied totally.
In 2019 for example, there were over 300,000 Malaysian pilgrims to Saudi Arabia. Sadly, it did not happen in 2020 and this year. If umrah and hajj operators could earn RM400 profit from each pilgrim, it would mean they have lost RM240 mil in profits over these two years. – July 31, 2021
YS Chan is Asean Tourism Master Trainer, Mesra Malaysia master trainer, tourism and transport business consultant and writer. He is also researcher for Travel Industry Occupational Framework published by the Department of Skills Development.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
