The 14,954 daily new cases yesterday is the first Covid-19 good news under the Ismail Sabri premiership since his appointment as the ninth Prime Minister exactly a month ago by the Yang d Pertuan Agong.
It is the lowest in some two months since July 26, when Malaysia recorded 14,516 daily new Covid-19 cases.
This is the first time that daily new Covid-19 cases in Malaysia had fallen below 15,000 cases for some two months. In the 59 days since July 26, Malaysia had for 21 days recorded over 20,000 daily new cases, reaching a peak of 24,544 cases on 26th August, while recording new cases in the 15,000-range only for two days.
One must however remember the saying “One swallow does not make a summer” and wait for the next few days to see whether the first good news for a year about the Covid-19 pandemic is here to stay – whether the worst of the longest Covid-19 wave in the world since the Sabah state general election last September is over and we have turned the corner to see the daily new cases come down to below 10,000 cases before falling to four-digit and then three-digit figures.
We must not let our guard down, however, for the struggle to win the war over the Covid-19 pandemic is far from over, firstly, because we are one of the worst-performing nations in the world in the Covid-19 pandemic and secondly, the havoc and destruction that is being caused by the Delta variant as seen by other countries in the world.
A fly in the ointment is the high death rate, particularly Brought-in-Dead (BID) Covid-19 deaths in Malaysia, which is best illustrated by the difficulty of the new Health Ministry website to post the data on Covid-19 deaths yesterday which only went up shortly before 6 am this morning instead of by midnight.
Medical and public health experts tracking the Covid-19 data have been complaining about the new website, particularly with regard to the Covid-19 deaths data, including the BID data, and I had suggested that the new Health Minister, Khairy Jamaluddin, should make a Ministerial statement in Parliament on the matter to clear the air.
Khairy should in particular explain why he had so far failed to reduce the BID Covid-19 deaths, as the number of BID death cases in his three weeks as Health Minister is very much more than the last three weeks of the previous Minister of Health.
Furthermore, Khairy should also explain why Malaysia is continuing to overtake more countries in cumulative total of Covid-19 cases, instead of losing to more countries – as Malaysia under his stewardship as Health Minister will overtake three other countries by the end of this week and be ranked No. 20 among countries in the world with the most cumulative total of Covid-19 cases.