THE government has just announced that most parts of Selangor and Kuala Lumpur will be under the enhance movement-control order (EMCO) from July 3-16.

Social media is abuzz with criticism of the EMCO with several quarters blaming the “half-hearted” enforcement of standard operating procedures (SOP) for the high rate in Covid-19 infections, especially with certain sectors such as manufacturing still allowed to operate.

Such arguments are simplistic and the data does not entirely support this.

First of all, it is untrue that the manufacturing sector is the main contributor to the Covid-19 caseloads. Data from the National Crisis Preparedness and Response Centre shows that from the 507 coronavirus clusters detected in the country between June 1 and June 23, only 195 were linked to this sector.

The sector contributed only 9.3%, or 12,872 cases, from the total 138,649 detected by the Health Ministry during the same period.

Director-general of health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah has said about 80% of the cases were sporadic. In other words, the source of infection cannot be determined.

The EMCO announced for most of the Klang Valley is meant to address these sporadic infections, not the workplace clusters, which have seen a dip in their contributions to the national caseload since MCO 3.0 was enforced.

Regardless, the EMCO is set to worsen the economic impact on the residents. As it is, the media has reported a rising number of suicides over the past year, presumably driven by despair over the pandemic. There is also a campaign for those in dire need of basic necessities to fly a white flag outside their homes so that others could reach out to them.

One just wonders how more dire the situation will be now that EMCO is enforced in the heart of the country’s economic activity. How many more white flags do we want to see fluttering from the homes of the despaired?

How do we explain this to the nasi campur seller whose shop serves assembly-line workers who have been told to stop coming to work?

How would the lorry driver who transports flour and rice earn a living if the demand for such items diminishes owing to some of his clients having to cease operations under a new SOP?

What about those in the downstream business activities?

Sunway University economist Dr Yeah Kim Leng was quoted as saying recently that “too much damage” has been inflicted on the economy, including companies folding, following the repeated MCO.

Besides, even if this EMCO can bring down infection numbers, there is no assurance that they will stay that way once the restrictions are lifted. How long are we going to keep playing whac-a-mole?

What we need to focus on is to step up the Covid-19 vaccination drive and expedite our herd immunity target.

The government is now vaccinating close to 300,000 people a day and is expected to hit 400,000 next month. There is light at the end of a long dark tunnel as far as the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme is concerned.

While vaccines are not the silver bullet to help us get through this, experience in countries that have immunised a large percentage of their populations such as the United Kingdom, Israel and Bahrain shows that it helps to bring back normalcy in ways that lockdowns are unable.

In the “lives versus livelihoods” tug of war, there’s no win-win solution. We are at war with an unseen enemy and in any war, there will be collateral damage. Our job is to contain the damage and ensure a swift victory. – July 2, 2021.

* Lim Kian Chung reads The Malaysian Insight.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.