By Lim Kit Siang
PRIME Minister Tan Sri Mahiaddin Yassin needs a dose of truth vaccine to realise that Malaysia is one of the world’s top worst-performing nations in the COVID-19 pandemic especially in the last six months under an emergency.
By any measure, Malaysia has joined the dubious club of the world’s worst-performing nations in the COVID-19 pandemic.
With cumulative total of 880,782 COVID-19 cases, we are now ranked No. 32 among nations with most cumulative total of COVID-19 cases, when eight months ago, we were ranked No. 85 – overtaking 53 countries in the process.
If yesterday’s 13,215 new COVID-19 cases is the rolling average for the next ten days, Malaysia is likely to reach a million COVID-19 cases and to be ranked No. 30 among countries in the world with the most cumulative total of COVID-19 cases when Parliament meets on July 26 – overtaking Portugal and Pakistan who are presently ranked No. 31 and respectively.
In total cases per million population index for July 14, in Our World in Data website, Malaysia at 26,804 is the highest in Asia, Asean and the Pacific, beating China, India, Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines.
We are the world’s top 13th country both for daily new COVID-19 cases and new COVID-19 deaths.
Health Director-General Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah is right that increase in COVID-19 cases is not only happening in Malaysia, as whole world is affected by the more dominant Delta variant, including our neighbouring countries and the UK.
The Government should heed the warning of the World Health Organisation (WHO) secretary-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that the world is in the early stages of a new COVID-19 wave caused by the Delta variant, reversing the trend of sustained decline in COVID-19 cases and deaths by increasing vaccination rates in Europe and North America.
Last week marked the fourth consecutive week of rising cases of COVID-19 globally, with increases recorded in all but one of WHO’s six regions. Deaths are also rising again, after 10 weeks of steady decline.
The Delta variant is now in more than 111 countries and WHO expects it to be the dominant COVID-19 strain circulating worldwide.
On Monday, I asked what proportion of our COVID-19 cases were of the Delta variant – 50%, 70% or 90%?
There was no answer, and this is one of the many examples of the failure of the Government’s communications strategy in the COVID-19 pandemic.
When emergency was declared on January 11 to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, Malaysia had 135,992 COVID-19 cases and 551 COVID-19 deaths.
Now, six months later, we have 880,782 COVID-19 cases and 6,613 COVID-19 deaths or more than six times the COVID-19 cases and 12 times the COVID-19 deaths.
Malaysians cannot understand how the Prime Minister can regard this as a success in the war against COVID-19 pandemic.
In addition, Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri Yaakob dropped a bombshell two days ago when he said the entire country was expected to move into Phase 2 of the National Recovery Plan in early August.
This is based on the performance of the National COVID-19 Immunisation Program (NIP) where individuals who completed two doses of vaccine exceeded the 10 percent threshold set for the country.
Under the National Recovery Plan announced by the Prime Minister on June 15, the transition from Phase 1 to Phase 2 is after the threshold values for the following three main indicators are met, whereby the number of daily COVID-19 cases drop below 4,000; the bed usage in intensive care units (ICU) are at moderate levels; and that 10% of the population have received.
A virologist in Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) has warned that the daily COVID-19 infections could rise to nearly 20,000 a day within the next two weeks, given the number of cases caused by more infectious Delta variant.
As for bed usage in intensive care units (ICUs), the stories and pictures of hospitals in the Klang Valley struggling to cope with rising number of COVID-19 patients, and the spectre of the oxygen crisis in India coming to Malaysia, are the best answers.
How can the whole country under the National Recovery Plan enter Phase 2 in August when the daily COVID-19 caseload will be more than treble or quadruple the first threshold of less than 4,000 cases daily and the Klang Valley hospitals are at breaking-point in ICU usage?
The Mahiaddin Cabinet should not paint a false and dishonest picture of the COVID-19 pandemic or claim that the government strategy, including the six-month emergency, was not a dismal failure in the war against COVID-19 pandemic.
Honesty is the best policy and the Government should own up to its mistakes in pursuing a failed strategy in the war against COVID-19 pandemic, for the people can forgive mistakes but not dishonesty. – July 16, 2021.
Lim Kit Siang is the MP for Iskandar Puteri.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
