It takes no pleasure to be right when I predicted yesterday that the cumulative total of Covid-19 cases in Malaysia may exceed three million cases before the week is out as this would happen today.
Yesterday, we recorded 20,939 Covid-19 cases, the 13th highest of new daily Covid-19 cases in the entire two-year Covid-19 pandemic, bringing the cumulative total of Covid-19 cases to 2,996,361 cases.
At this exponential rate of increase of the Omicron variant, we should exceed the daily peak of 24,599 Covid-19 cases on August 26, 2021 early next week.
This would mean that the Health Director-General, Noor Hisham’s earlier forecast that Malaysia is expected to reach 22,000 Covid-19 cases by the end of March will be exceeded earlier by more than a month.
The daily number of new daily Covid-19 cases have multiplied almost four times in the last two weeks. At this exponential rate of increase, will the new daily Covid-19 cases increase four-fold in the next two weeks by the time of the nomination of the Johore state general election with the shuddering figure of 80,000 cases a day?
What is the predicted daily caseload of new Covid-19 cases on polling day on March 12, 2022?
It is a matter of concern that as of last night, the R-number for Malaysia has reached 1.51. For comparison, the highest R-number reported by the ministry in 2021 was 1.21 on May 23 that year, shortly after the country recorded its first Delta variant cases.
This would make it more imperative that the Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin should urgently ensure that there is a new strategy to ensure a low mortality rate, as the situation of 1,062 Covid-19 deaths in December, 498 deaths in January and 97 deaths in the first 10 days in February are completely unacceptable.
Although the Omicron variant is not as severe and deadly as the earlier Delta variant, the Health Ministry must put in place a new strategy which will ensure that the public health system does not break down as happened before.
The number of people who have been hospitalised due to Covid-19 is 5,319 as of yesterday, up 97 percent compared to two weeks ago.
The Prime Minister Ismail Sabri should convene an emergency meeting of the Cabinet to consider whether an emergency should be declared to stop the Johore state general election, considering that an emergency was declared on January 11 last year when Malaysia had only 2,232 daily new Covid-19 cases and four Covid-19 deaths.
(Media Statement (2) by DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri Lim Kit Siang in Kuala Lumpur on Friday, 11th February 2022)