PUTRAJAYA’S failure in understanding and prioritising important matters are among reasons why the country’s Covid-19 caseload have passed the one million mark, Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad said.

The former health minister trained his guns on the Health Ministry today over its failure to curb the spread of the virus, despite using all avenues and resources at its disposal after taking over Putrajaya in March last year.

“The ministry only did targeted testing and contact tracing after a cluster had emerged.

“By the time an index case was detected, it had already created a cluster,” Dzulkefly (Kuala Selangor-PH) said during the special Dewan Rakyat sitting.

Dzulkefly cited poor diagnostic testing policies and the over-reliance on results of the RT-PCR test to confirm Covid-19 infections, after patients had taken the faster RTK-Antigen test.

“This slowed down the response. Speed is the name of the game. It is like fighting a war but thank God, I can see that there’s a change in policy, there is no requirement for a repeat of RT-PCR for a confirmatory test. But it took you so long to understand this situation,” he added.

Dzulkefly, who heads the Selangor Covid-19 task force, then admitted that the number of daily cases in Selangor is high but assured the Dewan Rakyat that the number of dead-on-arrival (DOA) cases remained low with mass testing.

Citing epidemiologist Prof Dr Awang Bulgiba Awang Mahmud, Dzulkefly warned observers against relying on the number of infections alone.

“Awang Bulgiba of Universiti Malaya said two or three times, do not just mention the number of daily cases, because if we keep mentioning the numbers, of course, Selangor is the highest.

“For example, Labuan’s population is 100,000, while Selangor’s is 6.8 million. One case in Labuan equals 68 cases in Selangor. If Labuan records 100 daily cases, Selangor records 6,800 cases. That is why prevalent cases must be in proportion with the population.

“We are not ashamed our numbers are high. But we would be ashamed if the DOA numbers were high. The Selangor government is going all out with mass testing to prevent DOA cases,” he said. – July 27, 2021.