It’s day 28 since Malaysia went into lock down or more precisely Movement Control Order (MCO) to stem the spread of Covid 19 in the country. Acting on the advice of WHO and learning from the hard lessons learnt by China, we are using the only playbook available to fight the coronavirus. From the first patient detected in Johor early January to April 14, the Health Ministry has now recorded 4987 cases, 82 deaths and 2478 patients discharged thus far.
These are numbers shared by the Ministry and updated daily during a press briefing at 5pm. They give us an insight on the coronavirus situation in the country how the hospitals are coping. But they also tell us where we are heading in this ongoing battle, what clue do they hold, how does Malaysia stack up in its battle against this invisible enemy?
We are now in phase three of the MCO,which first started from March 18 to 31 and subsequently the Prime Minister announced the extension for second phase until 14 April. Looking at the number of cases during those 4 weeks and seeing how they continued unabated, the government unanimously decided to extend the order for another 2 weeks. The average number of cases on a daily basis was hovering around 150-170 while they are considered low by global standards, what most experts are concern about is how they have been stagnant since phase 1 and in phase 2 they are still recording similar statistics.
Datuk Noor Hisham, Deputy General of Health, at the Health Ministry kept reminding everyone during his daily press briefing that Malaysia has not won the epidemic neither have we lose the fight. When asked about the number of cases not dropping nor peaking and if they have anything to do with inadequate testing.The DG was quick to point out how the Ministry is following WHO standards and proceeding with active testing on targeting high risk groups for better results. By conducting contact tracing on the identified clusters, enacting Enhanced Movement Control Order and cordoning districts, villages, and housing blocks, the Ministry was able to contain the spread and aggressively test everyone in those zones. To-date health officers have conducted over 80,000 tests and will be ramping this up significantly in the coming days.
It is clear now that the battle is far from over, Malaysia will not be able to screen 32 million of its citizens and the current level of testing being conducted shows the spread in the community is still rampant and more testing is necessary to weed out as many of the positive patients. To give an analogy; for a fisherman, the number of fishes he catches is determined by the size of his net, the wider the net the more fisher he will catch. Is Malaysia casting a wide net? The surprisingly consistent daily cases tells us otherwise and it does not spell positively for the nation. What it tells us is that the virus is spreading and not showing any sign that we have hit the peak and will see cases coming down.
We have another 14 days to monitor the situation, the DG will be getting additional support from the cabinet in terms of financial resources and stricter enforcement in high risk zones. More importantly he managed to convince the Ministers for restrict movements and continue MCO without much easing. This are important arsenals for the DG to continue with his duty.
When a journalist asked on when we can see the peaks and numbers coming down, he had this to say “they should be easing out but we can only feel at ease when the cases drop to 50 and below”. The rest of Malaysia waits, patiently.
