Malaysia tidak boleh mengikut buta-buta, pengajaran di UK, AS, ataupun China tetapi harus muncul dengan strategi yang tegas, kreatif, fleksibel, dan lincah untuk memenangi peperangan melawan wabak Covid-19

Tiga peristiwa penting telah berlaku dalam 24 jam yang lepas dalam peperangan global menentang wabak Covid-19.

Peristiwa pertama yang menyedihkan ialah pemecutan berterusan dan penyebaran eksponensial kes Covid-19. Wabak ini mengambil 67 hari dari kes pertama yang dilaporkan untuk mencapai 100,000 kes, 11 hari untuk mencapai 100,000 kes kedua, empat hari untuk mencapai 100,000 kes ketiga, tiga hari untuk mencapai 100,000 kes keempat; dua hari untuk mencapai 100,000 kes kelima; dan kurang 3,000 kes untuk mencapai paras 100,000 pada hari keenam. Jumlah keseluruhan global telah mencapai 597,267 kes sedangkan hari sebelumnya hanyalah terdapat 531,504 kes.

Peristiwa kedua adalah apabila jumlah orang yang dijangkiti Covid-19 di Amerika Syarikat melepasi paras 100,000, dengan peningkatan harian mendadak sebanyak 18,418 kes, dan jumlah kematian lebih daripada 1,600 orang, membawa jumlah kematian global kepada 27,286 orang.

Perkara ketiga adalah Itali, yang mengumumkan 919 kematian baru berpunca daripada coronavirus, jumlah kematian harian yang tertinggi yang dilaporkan negara itu sejak wabak tersebut mula tersebar lewat tahun lepas.

Jumlah kematian akibat COVID-19 di Itali kini adalah 9,134 nyawa – hampir tiga kali jumlah kematian Covid-19 di China (3,287). Jumlah kes itu terus meningkat, mencecah paras 86,498 — negara kedua yang mengatasi China yang mempunyai jumlah kes Covid-19 sebanyak 81,340 kes.

Perkara ini telah menghancurkan harapan yang Eropah berjaya membendung wabak ini, dengan Sepanyol merekodkan 769 kematian baru dalam satu hari, membawa jumlah kematian kepada 4,858 orang daripada sejumlah 65,719 kes; Jerman mencatatkan sejumlah 50,871 kes (peningkatan harian sebanyak 6,933 kes), Perancis dengan 32,964 kes (peningkatan 3,809 kes), United Kingdom denga 14,543 kes (peningkatan 2,885 kes) dan Switzerland dengan 13,143 kes (peningkatan 1,332 kes).

Ketua lembaga kesihatan kebangsaan Itali telah memberikan amaran bahawa penyebaran Covid-19 ini belum mencapai kemuncaknya di negara tersebut dan perintah berkurung perlu dilanjutkan.

Di seluruh dunia, jumlah kes telah melebihi 597,267 kes di mana kira-kira 133,363 pesakit telah pulih.

Dengan Amerika Syarikat sebagai pusat baharu wabak Covid-19, doktor dan jururawat di barisan hadapan krisis koronavirus Amerika Syarikat telah merayu supaya lebih banyak peralatan pelindungan dan peralatan diberikan untuk merawat pesakit yang dijangka akan membanjiri hospital.

“Kami ketakutan,” kata Dr. Arabia Mollette dari Brookdale University Hospital dan Pusat Perubatan di Brooklyn memberitahu agensi berita Reuters. “Kami cuba berjuang untuk kehidupan orang lain, tetapi kami juga berjuang untuk kehidupan kami, kerana kami juga menghadapi risiko pendedahan yang tertinggi”.

Para doktor telah menyatakan keperluan mendesak untuk ventilator tambahan, mesin yang membantu pesakit bernafas dan secara meluas diperlukan bagi mereka yang menghidapi COVID-19, yang merupakan satu penyakit pernafasan yang disebabkan oleh virus yang sangat berjangkit dan merbahaya.

Seorang doktor wad kecemasan di Michigan, yang merupakan pusat penularan wabak yang baharu, berkata beliau menggunakan satu topeng muka kertas untuk keseluruhan syif beliau kerana kekurangan topeng muka dan hospital-hospital di kawasan Detroit juga akan kehabisan ventilator.

“Kami mempunyai hospital di kawasan Detroit di Michigan yang sedang menghampiri bekalan akhir ventilator mereka dan perlu mula memberitahu ahli keluarga pesakit bahawa mereka tidak dapat menyelamatkan pesakit kerana tidak mempunyai peralatan yang cukup,” kata Dr. Rob Davidson, dalam video yang dipaparkan di Twitter.

Inilah keadaan yang menyayat hati di negara-negara yang memerangi wabak Covid-19 tetapi perkara paling mengejutkan adalah keadaan sistem kesihatan awam di Amerika Syarikat yang begitu rapuh.

Menurut Indeks Keselamatan Kesihatan Global, kad laporan yang memberi nilai kepada setiap negara dalam kesediaannya untuk menghadapi pandemik, Amerika Syarikat mendapat markah 83.5 — tertinggi di dunia. Kaya, kuat, maju, Amerika sepatutnya menjadi negara yang paling bersedia. Ilusi ini telahpun hancur. Walaupun dengan berbulan-bulan amaran awal mengenai penyebaran virus itu di negara lain, apabila Amerika akhirnya diuji dengan COVID-19, ia gagal.

Kegagalan dalam penyaringan telah digambarkan sebagai “dosa asal” kegagalan Amerika, kecacatan tunggal yang menjejaskan setiap tindak balas yang lain. Sekiranya negara tersebut dapat dengan tepat mengesan penyebaran virus ini, hospital boleh melaksanakan pelan pandemik mereka, bersedia dengan memperuntukkan bilik rawatan, memesan bekalan tambahan, memanggil para petugas, atau menyediakan kemudahan khusus untuk menangani kes-kes COVID-19.

Semua itu tidak berlaku. Sebaliknya, dengan sistem penjagaan kesihatan yang sudah menghampiri kapasiti penuh yang baru sahaja menghadapi musim selesema yang teruk, kini tiba-tiba berhadapan dengan virus yang telah tersebar luas, tanpa disedari, melalui komuniti di seluruh negara.

Hospital-hospital yang sudah mencapai kapasiti tidak dapat menampung jumlah kes baharu lagi. Peralatan pelindungan asas, seperti topeng, gaun, dan sarung tangan, mula habis, diikuti dengan katil dan ventilator yang memberikan oksigen kepada pesakit yang paru-parunya diserang virus.

Apa yang menjadi petanda untuk waktu ini adalah ketika Presiden Amerika Syarikat bercakap melalui telefon dengan Perdana Menteri United Kingdom — yang telah diuji positif dengan Covid-19 — hal pertama yang dibangkitkan Boris Johnson kepada Donald Trump adalah “Kami memerlukan ventilator” dan Johnson meminta sebanyak dua kali kepada Trump untuk ventilator.

Malaysia mesti belajar dari kesilapan Amerika Syarikat, Eropah dan juga China, tetapi kita tidak boleh buta-buta mengikuti negara-negara lain dalam peperangan global melawan wabak Covid-19, tetapi harus muncul dengan dengan strategi yang tegas, kreatif, fleksibel, dan lincah dalam menghadapi cabaran Covid-19 yang baru dan beraneka ragam kepada kesihatan awam, ekonomi, sistem maklumat dan politik dunia.

Sebagai permulaan, respons “tegas, kreatif, fleksibel dan lincah” terhadap wabak Covid-19 boleh mengambil kira cadangan oleh “Uncle Yap” dalam suratnya kepada Malaysiakini supaya Perintah Kawalan Pergerakan (MCO) diubah suai untuk membolehkan seseorang untuk bersenam bersendirian atau dengan ahli keluarga di suatu tempat luar dari rumah.

Seperti yang dikatakan Uncle Yap:

“Di hampir setiap bandar dan kampung di Malaysia, anda boleh melihat sekumpulan rakyat yang berkumpul dari 6 hingga 7 pagi di gelanggang bola keranjang, kawasan rekreasi dan ruang terbuka yang lain di kawasan kejiranan mereka.

“Sekiranya PKP ini diubah sedikit untuk membolehkan orang ramai bersenam bersendirian atau dengan ahli keluarganya atau sekiranya, dalam kumpulan, dengan menjaga jarak sosial, kita boleh memastikan rakyat kita terus kekal sihat, perkara yang amat penting untuk mengekalkan sistem imun yang kuat untuk menentang Covid-19. “

Saya serahkan kepada Perdana Menteri, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.

(Kenyataan media (2) Ahli Parlimen DAP Iskandar Puteri Lim Kit Siang pada hari Sabtu 28 Mac 2020)

===================================

Three grim milestones were chalked up in the last 24 hours in the invisible global war against the Covid-19 pandemic.

The first grim milestone is the continued acceleration and exponential spread of Covid-19 cases. It took 67 days from the first reported case to reach 100,000 cases, 11 days for second 100,000 cases, four days for the third 100,000 cases, three days for the fourth 100,000 cases; two days for the fifth 100,000 cases; and just one day short of 3,000 cases to reach the sixth 100,000 cases. The global total has reached 597,267 when it was 531,504 the previous day.

The second grim milestone was in the United States when the number of people infected with Covid-19 in the United States passed the 100,000 mark, with a shocking daily increase of 18,418 cases, with the number of fatalities of over 1,600, pushing the global death toll to 27,286.

The third grim milestone was Italy, which announced 919 new deaths from coronavirus, the highest number of fatalities any country has reported in the space of 24 hours since the outbreak began late last year.

The total number of people who have died as a result of COVID-19 in Italy now stands at 9,134 – almost three times the total Covid-19 deaths in China (3,287). The total number of cases also continue to rise, hitting 86,498 – the second nation to surpass China, which had a total Covid-19 cases of 81,340.

This has dashed hopes that Europe is containing the pandemic, with Spain recording 769 new deaths in a day, bringing the total number of fatalities to 4,858 out of a total of 65,719 cases; Germany recording a new total of 50,871 (daily increase of 6,933 cases), France totaled 32,964 (increase of 3,809), United Kingdom totaled 14,543 (increase of 2,885) and Switzerland 13,143 (increase of 1,332).

The head of the Italian national health institute has warned that Covid-19 infections have not yet reached their peak in the country and that lockdown measures will have to be extended.

Worldwide, the cases have reached more than 597,267 of which about 133,363 cases have recovered.

With the United States as the new epicentre of the Covid-19 pandemic, doctors and nurses on the front lines of the US coronavirus crisis has pleaded for more protective gear and equipment to treat waves of patients expected to overwhelm hospitals.

“We are scared,” Dr. Arabia Mollette of Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center in Brooklyn told Reuters news agency. “We’re trying to fight for everyone else’s life, but we also fight for our lives as well, because we’re also at the highest risk of exposure”.

Physicians have called particular attention to a desperate need for additional ventilators, machines that help patients breathe and are widely needed for those suffering from COVID-19, the respiratory ailment caused by the highly contagious and deadly virus.

One emergency room doctor in Michigan, an emerging epicenter of the pandemic, said he was using one paper face mask for an entire shift due to a shortage and that hospitals in the Detroit area would soon run out of ventilators.

“We have hospital systems here in the Detroit area in Michigan who are getting to the end of their supply of ventilators and have to start telling families that they can’t save their loved ones because they don’t have enough equipment,” the physician, Dr. Rob Davidson, said in a video posted on Twitter.

This is the common heart-wrenching situation in countries fighting the Covid-19 pandemic but it is most shocking that the public health conditions in the United States are so fragile.

On the Global Health Security Index, a report card that grades every country on its pandemic preparedness, the United States has a score of 83.5—the world’s highest. Rich, strong, developed, America is supposed to be the readiest of nations. That illusion has been shattered. Despite months of advance warning as the virus spread in other countries, when America was finally tested by COVID-19, it failed.

The testing fiasco has been described as the “original sin” of America’s pandemic failure, the single flaw that undermined every other countermeasure. If the country could have accurately tracked the spread of the virus, hospitals could have executed their pandemic plans, girding themselves by allocating treatment rooms, ordering extra supplies, tagging in personnel, or assigning specific facilities to deal with COVID-19 cases.

None of that happened. Instead, a health-care system that already runs close to full capacity, and that was already challenged by a severe flu season, was suddenly faced with a virus that had been left to spread, untracked, through communities around the country.

Overstretched hospitals became overwhelmed. Basic protective equipment, such as masks, gowns, and gloves, began to run out, followed by beds and ventilators that provide oxygen to patients whose lungs are besieged by the virus.

It seems to be the signs of the times that when the United State President spoke by phone to the United Kingdom Prime Minister, who had been tested positive for Covid-19, the first thing Boris Johnson said to Donald Trump was “We need ventilators” and Johnson asked Trump twice for ventilators.

Malaysia must learn from the mistakes of United States, Europe and even China, but we must not blindly follow other countries in the invisible global battle against the Covid-19 epidemic, but must craft our own response to the Covid-19 challenge – one which is firm, imaginative, creative, flexible and even nimble to the new and variegated challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic to public health, economic, information and political systems in the world.

A start to the “firm, imaginativfe, creative, flexible and even nimble” response to the Covid-19 pandemic is the proposal by “Uncle Yap” in the Malaysiakini letters’ column for the Movement Control Order (MCO) to be modified to allow a person to exercise alone or with a family member away from home.

As Uncle Yap said:

“In almost every town and village in Malaysia, you will find groups of citizens gathering in the morning from 6 to 7 at basketball courts, recreation grounds and other open spaces in their neighbourhood.

“If the MCO is slightly amended to allow people to exercise alone or with family members or if, in a group, to observe the social distance then we will have our people continuing to maintain good health which is so essential to sustaining a strong immune system to resist Covid-19.”

Over to the Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.

(Media Statement (2) by DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri Lim Kit Siang on Saturday, March 28, 2020)