MP SPEAKS | The Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah is right – the people must not get complacent over the falling numbers of Covid-19 infections as the multiple wars in the pandemic is far from over.

We may be winning the battle over the second wave of the outbreak, but the multiple wars on the coronavirus are long and protracted ones until an effective vaccine is developed in 18 to 24 months’ time.

Are we prepared for the third wave? How many waves and lockdowns will there even be before a vaccine is available? 

Speaking remotely at the video hearing of the United Kingdom Parliament’s Health and Social Care Select Committee last Friday, University College London Global Health professor Anthony Costello said that the UK must face up to the "harsh reality" that it did not react quickly enough to warnings on Covid-19.

He said the British government responded too slowly to the outbreak, and the nation could see as many as 40,000 deaths before the pandemic is over.

The leading physician and former British director at the World Health Organisation told MPs that the UK could face as many as six waves of the coronavirus before a vaccine could be developed and made widely available.

In order to avoid another large spike in fatalities once the country begins to ease its lockdown measures, he said the government must up community testing capacity and embrace South Korea-style contact tracing.

"We all hope that the national lockdown and social distancing will bring about a large suppression of the epidemic; however, we are going to face further waves.

"We need to make sure we have a system in place that can not just do a certain number of tests in the laboratory. We also need a system at district and community level to test people rapidly in the community, in care homes, and make sure the results get back to them very quickly," he said. 

"We need to maintain social distancing of some kind when we lift the national lockdown, by focusing on the people we really want to lockdown, which are cases and contacts.

"You need to find cases, test them if you can, trace their contacts, isolate them, do social distancing - but most importantly, you do it all at speed," he added. 

He said it was likely that the most vulnerable people in the country would have to remain in some form of lockdown until there is a vaccine.

"We have to get the economy going and if it means locking down 10 percent of our population, even giving them incentives to stay in quarantine and with digital apps to help monitor their symptoms and give them support, that's the way to really keep this going until we get a vaccine and safe herd immunity."

We must learn from the grave mistakes of the UK and the US, which have become two leading epicentres of the pandemic, with both leading in the daily increase of new cases and deaths in the world. 

Worldwide, total Covid-19 cases stand at 2,324,731 and the global death toll is 160,434.

The US has a total of 736,790 Covid-19 confirmed cases, leading the world in an increase of 27,055 new cases and 1,766 deaths to reach a total death toll of 38,920 in the last 24 hours. The UK has come in second with a daily increase of 5,525 cases to total 114,271 and an increase of 888 deaths to a total death toll of 15,464.

But we must learn the good lessons too from the US and the UK – and one of the good lessons and best practices of the pandemic is the continued scrutiny of the UK House of Commons and its select committees to ensure that the most effective strategy against Covid-19 and the best exit plan for the economic recovery of the UK are adopted.

When will Malaysia’s experts in public health testify before Parliament, even in virtual proceedings, to find the best way to win the war against Covid-19 as well as the best exit strategy for the country?

The ministers do not seem to know that the "government knows best" era is over.

Officials and experts all over the world are looking ahead at the end of the lockdowns.

But the government does not seem to have a blueprint for the best exit plan for Malaysia to contain Covid-19, revive the economy and rebuild Malaysia, which is why Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has not responded to my call for a live telecast to share with Malaysians the details of such an exit plan.

This mentality is probably the cause of the shocking idea of a one-day Parliament on May 18 to emasculate and marginalise Parliament’s role in the invisible war against Covid-19.

Instead of a flexible, creative and nimble approach to face the challenges of the pandemic, we only see the ham-fisted way the health minister has tried to get back into the limelight after his disastrous “warm water” outing, making no contribution whatsoever for the best exit strategy for Malaysia.

I wonder how a person could restore his claim as one of the whiz kids of the new administration and burnish his reputation by roping support from a political leader who created history with the most number of criminal charges related to corruption?

The journey post-Covid-19 is a no man’s land as it is unchartered territory. It will be a journey of trial and errors but we must ensure that it is a journey of smart trial and errors, learning from the successes and failures of other countries, in particular China, South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, US, UK, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia in the same journey.

In the UK, Cambridge University scientists have compiled a list of 275 changes to day-to-day life that could help reduce coronavirus transmissions after lockdowns end.

Has the government considered these proposals?

In the absence of the best exit plan strategy and blueprint, I would urge Muhyiddin to instruct the National Security Council and his cabinet to focus the coming week on formulating the two, conduct the widest consultation with civil society and various sectors of the economy, and to present the strategy and blueprint to Parliament for adoption and implementation.

LIM KIT SIANG is MP for Iskandar Puteri.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.

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