Before Hari Raya Aidilfirtri, Malaysians were sorely offended when the Indonesian Government used Malaysia, together with India, in its admonishment as two countries Indonesians should not emulate for the mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic in its advice to Indonesians to stay home and to take precautions about Covid-19 in the Hari Raya Aidilfitri holidays.
Now Malaysia has together with India become the two international poster boys of failure in the handling of Covid-19 pandemic, although this is unfair to India, as it had been on a sharp decline since its peak of daily increase of 414,422 new Covid-19 cases on May 6, which fell 53% to a daily increase of 195,815 new Covid-19 cases on 14th May 2021.
For Malaysia, however, there had been an upward surge since April 11, and in particular, in the last seven days when the Malaysian peak of daily increase of 5,728 new Covid-19 cases on 30th January was broken every day, culminating in the highest daily increase of 7,289 cases yesterday.
And the worst is yet to come as it was reported in BFM news yesterday that data suggested that daily cases could reach 9,000 by June 5 if there is no SOP compliance.
In the latest Bloomberg Covid Resilience Ranking which prides itself as a monthly ranking of the best and worst places to be during the Covid-19 pandemic, Malaysia and India recorded the steepest drops.
In the latest ranking – May 2021 – Malaysia plummeted 15 spots to 35th place, a steep fall out of the top 20 among 53 countries with economies of more than US$200 billion. India was worse, which fell 20 places to number 50.
Undoubtedly, a big part of the reasons for the drop in ranking for Malaysia is the slow vaccination rate and poor coverage.
Singapore, which held the top spot in the April ranking and dropped only one notch in the May report, had vaccinated 29.9% of its population while Malaysia had only managed 3.6% as of May 25.
Bloomberg’s vaccination analysis shows that, at the current rate, Malaysia will only achieve 75% immunisation coverage two years from now.
Sadly, Malaysia has a reversal of roles with the United States of America.
It is indeed an unimaginable contrast that Malaysia’s Health Director-General Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah should be warning Malaysians to be prepared for the worst in the Covid-19 pandemic when the worst country in the world in the pandemic, the United States with 34 million Covid-19 cases and over 600,000 Covid-19 deaths, is looking forward to the end of the pandemic!
This is the extent of the failure of Malaysia in the mishandling of the war against the Covid-19 pandemic in the last 17 months, akin to the horrible Light Rail Transit (LRT) collision in Kuala Lumpur because a negligent driver drove the LRT in the wrong direction, injuring 64 passengers with three suffering brain haemorrhage – a systemic failure which should never have happened.
Who would believe at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic 17 months ago that we would for the last 14 consecutive days have a higher daily increase of new Covid-19 cases than Indonesia, which has about nine times the population of Malaysia?
Who would believe that Malaysia, ranked No. 42 among countries with the most cumulative total of Covid-19 cases, would beat 36 of the 41 nations ranked above it in the category of “confirmed cases per million”?
This is very clear from the statistics in Our World In Data for May 24, 2021 as Malaysia is worse in this category than nations like the United States, India, France, Turkey, Russia, United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Spain, Iran, Mexico, Indonesia, South Africa, Philippines, Iraq, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
We are now fighting a losing battle in the war against the Covid-19 pandemic because we have failed in five important aspects of the war, viz:
· Maintaining public and confidence in war against the Covid-19 pandemic;
· National mobilisation of Malaysians to ensure a genuine “whole-of-society” strategy and approach;
· A new economic stimulus package to help the poor and vulnerable;
· Effective and efficient Find-Test-Trace-Isolate-Support (FTTIS) strategy to ensure that we are always ahead of the pandemic curve; and
· Acceleration of the national vaccination rollout especially in view of deadly Covid-19 variants.
The Yang di Pertuan Agong should host an All-Party All-NGOs Conference on the Covid-19 Pandemic to avoid Malaysia from becoming an international poster boy of a nation losing the war against the Covid-19 pandemic.
(Media Statement (2) by DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri Lim Kit Siang in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday, 26th May 2021)