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| Malaysian Medical Association has questioned the government’s move to implement a nationwide movement control order while still allowing all economic sectors to operate. |
MCO pointless if all economic sectors stay open, says MMA
FMT
PETALING JAYA: The Malaysian Medical Association has questioned the government’s move to implement a nationwide movement control order while still allowing all economic sectors to operate.
MMA president Dr Subramaniam Muniandy said the government should have taken a firm stand and implemented a stricter MCO, adding that a better approach would be a strict lockdown for two weeks at most before slowly lifting restrictions.
“I don’t see the purpose of this MCO because you have all economic sectors open which are all over the place, in different locations. I don’t see the logic, it’s even contradictory.
“The virus has already spread everywhere and it will only get worse. I think the general public is also worried. But what the government is doing might be counterproductive for them as well as the people,” he told FMT.
Noting that Putrajaya had to balance between the economy and public health, he maintained that a lockdown was necessary at this point.
“The problem is, if people get infected and fall sick, where will the money from the economy go? It will be spent on treating these patients, acquiring equipment to treat them. Of course, we can’t close the economy for months and months.”
Former deputy health minister Dr Lee Boon Chye criticised the government for announcing sporadic MCO restrictions in several states and districts before deciding on implementing it nationally.
He told FMT that Putrajaya would have had all the information and data it needed to decide on a nationwide MCO and could have announced it last week, rather than just the MCO on six Selangor districts at the time.
“Last week, they announced an MCO for six districts in Selangor and left out KL. Then they included KL, then they included some districts in Johor, some in Penang. I mean, this is rubbish.
“If you plot the curve (of daily infections) you would have known (a nationwide MCO was needed). You don’t decide based on the cases day by day. As it is, the numbers will continue to rise because the MCO’s effects will only kick in one or two weeks later.
“You’ve got to be pre-emptive. You should be one step ahead of the curve, not chasing the curve,” he said.
Unlike Subramaniam, Lee said there was no need for a total closure of economic sectors. He said the government should be aware by now of the particular sectors that were high-risk and low-risk.
Stringent SOPs must be in place for sectors that were more prone to Covid-19 outbreaks, he said, adding that the nation now needed to learn how to live with the virus.
“Public health measures are not about eradicating the virus. We can’t eradicate the virus from the community now. The objective is to make sure that the outbreak doesn’t get out of control and cause our public health system to collapse.”
Nonetheless, he felt that the MCO would be able to give the public health system some breathing space, as hospitals run out of beds and ICUs designated for Covid-19 patients.
But he said the health ministry needed to improve on its contact tracing efforts to isolate and test close contacts as this would help in preventing potential clusters.
He said the ministry’s contact tracing was not good enough right now, especially following multiple accounts of delayed response in this matter.
“We’ve heard of cases where patients are only brought to treatment centres a few days after testing positive. What more contact tracing? The only way we can keep our numbers low is if we can identify all of a patient’s close contacts within 48 hours and test and isolate them,” he said.
Lee, who is Gopeng MP, had urged Putrajaya last month to establish a contact tracing network comprising an additional 10,000 special workers with mass screenings conducted.
He had said unemployed graduates and those who lost their jobs during the pandemic could be recruited for this and be trained and supervised by public health officials.
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