It beggars belief that the country has been in a lockdown mode for more than 8 weeks now and yet the number of COVID-19 positive cases in the country appears to be running out of control. Yesterday, the country reported a record 11,079 cases, shattering the previous high of 9,353 cases recorded just 2 days earlier. This is rapidly approaching 3 times the 4,140 cases reported on 16 May 2021, when MCO3.0 was declared.
It is now completely obvious that the Health Minister Dr Adham Baba has been resting on his laurels believing that the virus will just magically fly away once the lockdown is put in place.
For more than 8 weeks the people have suffered in silence, losing income and livelihood hoping to return to some form of normalcy as quickly as possible. However, Dr Adham Baba and the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government have completely wasted the sacrifice of the people because they have failed to play their role to contain the spread of the virus to complement the people’s sacrifice during the lockdown.
The most obvious evidence of this failure is the fact that the Ministry of Health (MoH) has conducted declining number of COVID-19 tests despite high and rising percentage positive rates of those who were tested.
The chart above is compiled with data from MoH demonstrates how the weekly test positivity rate in cases remained elevated throughout the MCO period with the lowest of 6.61% achieved in the week of 6 – 12 June.
Based on World Health Organisation recommendations, any positivity rates above 5% is too high and actions must be taken before any re-opening of the economic and social sectors are recommended.
But what did our Minister do? Instead of increasing the number of tests to track the positive cases to isolate and reduce transmission, he reduced the tests substantially. The total number of cases tested declined consistently from average daily samples of 109,601 in the week of 23 – 29 May to 72,308 cases (20 – 26 June), a massive drop of 34%! This was despite repeated calls by Pakatan Harapan leaders, think tanks and the civil society imploring the Ministry to carry out more tests.
The Ministry has only very gradually boosted the average weekly test samples over the last two weeks despite a sharp rise in positivity rate to 8.92% last week. Even then, the 87,457 average daily samples is still far below the testing carried out in May.
What is the Minister doing? Why is there no strategic urgency to drastically boost the number of tests carried out as clearly, the number of untested Covid-positive cases infecting the community is still very, very large.
This is proven by the report published yesterday by MoH, that the 11,079 positive cases detected were from 116,869 samples which gave a positivity rate of 9.48%.
Instead of merely announcing another special COVID-19 task force for the Klang Valley with no specific plan of action in sight, Dr Adham Baba must take full responsibility of the MCO3.0 and FMCO disaster by resigning as the Health Minister. His incompetence has caused billions of ringgit of losses, immeasurable pain and hardship to ordinary Malaysians struggling to make a living during the pandemic. If he fails to resign, it is imperative for the Perikatan Nasional government to sack the most incompetent Health Minister we have ever had in the history of Malaysia.