THERE is a route for Malaysia to combat the virus and develop a new real recovery plan but it requires a change in mindset and the adoption of a multi-pronged approach.

As we move closer to the reopening of Parliament on July 26, there is a growing consensus across the whole spectrum of politics, business and society that Malaysia has reached a very complex and critical crossroads, and that a new strategy is needed.

The government is showing flexibility and positive engagement, particularly from Finance Minister Tengku Zafrul Tengku Abdul Aziz, who is engaging well with all stakeholders including opposition politicians. This is a positive move generating good will and new ideas.

The experience of the past 18 months emphasises that health is an absolute priority in the debate on lives versus economy but the management of the balance is also in need of attention.

Using lockdowns and standard operating procedures (SOP) as the only instruments has proven ineffective, and it is not advised by the World Health Organization (WHO).

We also know that the recent addition of the vaccine is helpful but not a quick or comprehensive solution.

In the United Kingdom, for example, where almost 70% of the total population is vaccinated and the country has been in full lockdown, new cases have risen from a seven-day average of around 1,800 per day in mid-May to around 55,000 on July 17. Worryingly, about 47% of all new cases are people who have been vaccinated.

We now also have sufficient evidence to see what happened in Malaysia and to learn some lessons for how to proceed. Principal among these is that fighting the virus with only lockdowns and SOP has proved ineffective on all fronts.

We have record daily positive tests, record numbers of people in treatment and ICU, an overwhelmed health system and, above all, rising daily fatalities.

We have a deep recession and the resources allocated in multiple stimulus packages have not changed the trend.

We are now in a new phase with positive test results indicating out of control exponential growth in the spread of the virus taking us into uncharted territory.

There are many steps that can be taken to find a better solution. The first is to recognise that the devastating 2020 economic outcome was predictable and a strong probability of recession in 2021 is also predictable.

These scenarios, which we identified in 2020 and have forecast for 2021, are now largely accepted. The optimistic consensus economic forecasts, which made it easy to choose a lockdown in the face of relatively sanguine predictions of economic costs, were simply wrong.

The “tipping point” in mid-2021 that we identified in early March is corroborated by official and industry surveys of entrepreneurs, retailers and households.

These show that we will soon reach a point of disaster for the economy with a domino effect across many sectors. We expect double digit unemployment toward the end of the year.

Based on Ministry of Health projections and our economic forecasts, the economic downturn will happen earlier than the decline in the number of cases to the national recovery plan thresholds and will not be prevented by the lockdown and vaccine strategy.

So we need to “decouple” economic management from the management of the health crisis because the evidence clearly shows that they are deteriorating at independent rates.

This is possible through the adoption of a multi-pronged management strategy including alternative early treatments and prophylaxis, as happened in India and in other international cases.

Our analysis, following similar profiles as the ministry for expected new case numbers, shows how the debate about life versus the economy is badly framed.

By following a different multi-pronged strategy it is possible to stop the economic decline and to save many lives at the same time. There is no binding trade-off.

The conditions to end the lockdowns are to implement all options for the management of the epidemic including Find-Test-Trace-Isolate-Treat as advocated by the WHO, and targeted lockdowns and risk-based assessments to end the arbitrary “essential, non-essential” distinctions as advocated by industry groups.

Above all the use of preventative prophylaxis and therapeutic treatments prescribed in controlled settings by GPs or in hospitals or even distributed at the vaccination centres is a key component to a successful multi-pronged strategy.

Indeed, the recent disclosure by director-general of health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah that more than 98% of all new cases are Category 1 (no symptoms) or Category 2 (mild symptoms) emphasises the need to use preventative prophylaxis and therapeutic treatments because it is exactly these patients who benefit most according to respected and peer-reviewed meta-analysis studies.

With an immediate introduction of alternative treatments it is possible to treat earlier stage positive cases and reopen the economy quickly in a responsible way.

As a test case, these ideas can and should be implemented immediately in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur, which not only have the highest number of cases and early stage cases but are the home of many workplace and factory clusters, and account for about 40% of gross domestic product.

If we have the courage to follow this strategy we can achieve an end to the lockdown by September. A new real recovery plan based on social market interventions and reform can be then be implemented to accelerate and make the recovery of Malaysia more robust.

We can then lower the white flag and raise the Malaysian flag once again. – July 18, 2021.

* Paolo Casadio and Geoffrey Williams are economists based in Kuala Lumpur.

* 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.