PUTRAJAYA needs to better coordinate and collaborate with various parties to handle the Covid-19 pandemic in the country instead of enacting reactive policies, said former health ministry director-general Dr Mohamed Ismail Merican said.

He said that the current lockdown employed by the government has not achieved the desired effect as the number of daily infections continues to trend upwards while the healthcare system crumbles.

“We must do risk-mapping with epidemiological and socioeconomic factors as input, so that you can identify the high-risk areas and do targeted lockdowns. Not just firefighting from ministers who smile and think that they are doing a great job.

“If we do not shift gears in the next two months, we are going to see the same kind of scenario,” he said, at an online forum hosted by Wong Chun Wai, The Star Media Group adviser.

Ismail, who retired in 2011 and oversaw the country’s management of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak in 2003, laid down several strategies with the emphasis on collaboration and coordination between different stakeholders to mitigate the spread of the virus in the country.

“You must get the private hospitals, the university hospitals, the army hospitals, the general practitioners, community leaders and the community involved from the beginning.

“Not a case of ‘I know best you just follow what I do’. People don’t like that,” he said.

He said Malaysia should also ramp up testing and fast-track all testing kits to avoid backlogs while ensuring that a proper containment and mitigation system is put in place.

“Our contact tracing and isolation of cases have gone down the drain.

“The daily positivity rate for Covid-19 is 5-8%. Which means if you extrapolate that, daily, in the community, we have about 1.5 to 2.5 million cases.

“What we are detecting is 5,000 and 10,000 cases, which is only 1% of the active cases in the community. So this is not right.”

Malaysia reported 12,541 cases yesterday, taking the national caseload to 893,323 cases.

He also blamed the high rate of community transmission on expensive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests.

“The tests must either be given free or be affordable. The PCR test is the gold standard for acute cases but it is expensive for the common people.

When an RTK-Antigen test returns a positive result, you will be asked to do a PCT test to confirm.

“But your pak cik and mak cik won’t do that. They will go back to the kampung and infect the whole village. They have no choice, they have no money. This is an issue that has to be discussed,” he said.

Commending the vaccination efforts so far, Ismail, however, said that mega vaccination centres have sparked a Covid-19 cluster.

He said he also found it strange that the Ministry of Health was not involved in the immunisation programme.

As of July 16, 13.6 million people have been vaccinated. Of which, 9.3 million or 28.5% of the population have received their first dose and 4.3 million or 13.2% have received both jabs.

He also suggested that the government should have one spokesperson for technical matters as there are too many confusing and unclear messages delivered.

He also urged the government to have all Covid-19 data analysed by professionals and shared with the public. – July 17, 2021.