Yesterday, Malaysia recorded 10,915 daily new Covid-19 cases, lowest in 76 days since July 18.
Daily Covid-19 deaths were 109 deaths including 33 Brought-in-Dead (BID) cases – lowest daily Covid-19 death count in 69 days since July 25, while the BID numbers were the lowest in 41 days since August 9.
While the new Health Minister, Khairy Jamaluddin, should be commended for this success, it is equally obvious that it is accompanied by his failure in his first month in office to bring down the daily new Covid-19 cases down to double digit numbers and daily Covid-19 deaths to single-digit numbers.
Yesterday, Indonesia recorded 1,413 daily new Covid-19 cases and looks likely to beat Malaysia to reduce its daily new Covid-19 cases to triple-digit numbers.
In fact, for the last 31 days, the daily new Covid-19 cases in Indonesia had had been in four-digit numbers while Malaysia had been struggling to reduce the new Covid-19 cases to below 10,000 cases.
As Indonesia had been able to reduce its daily peak of new Covid-19 cases from 56,757 cases on 15th July to 1,414 cases yesterday, there is no reason why Malaysia cannot be more effective in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic.
Khairy should convene a national conference on Covid-19 pandemic involving public and private health sectors and health NGOs and NGIs on how to bring daily new Covid-19 cases down to double-digit numbers and daily Covid-19 deaths to single-digit numbers.
On the day Khairy took his oath of office as the new Health Minister on August 30, there were 568 Covid-19 deaths in Indonesia. Yesterday, it had been reduced to 89 deaths.
In contrast, 295 Covid-19 deaths were recorded in Malaysia on August 30 but we could only reduce it to 109 Covid-19 deaths yesterday.
A whole-of-society national conference to bring the daily new Covid-19 cases in Malaysia down to double-digit numbers and the daily Covid-19 deaths to single-digit numbers so that Malaysians can “live with Covid-19” is urgently needed.
(Media Statement by DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri Lim Kit Siang in Gelang Patah on Sunday, 3rd October 2021)