A WORSENING wave of Covid-19 has dealt a cruel blow to our country while the politicians in the ruling coalition are more interested in gaining and keeping power than in combatting the virus. 

Covid has crushed all pretence. Rather than a government caring for her citizens to showcase strength, the image presented to the world was one of administrative incompetence, woeful health facilities and economic weakness.

Thousands of new cases have arisen since early July 2021. Low testing rates and the government’s haphazard pandemic response mean these figures only provide a partial picture.

Instead of curbing and bringing the number of cases down, patchwork of restrictions, announced progressively, saw the number of cases rising in tandem.

Trust in the government’s pandemic response is understandably low. 

Government ministers spent more time extolling the government’s imaginary achievements than on urgent public health messaging. The investigation into the high profile strike by contract doctors while the country grapples with a surge in Covid-19 cases since the pandemic began, gives a sense of the government’s priorities.

The crisis has exposed a ruling government bedeviled by skewed priorities. 

In the vain hope of snaring power in a state, elections were held. In another instance, relaxations were made for a religious festival. As recently as July, the government was touting a RM11 billion project to build the 5G infrastructure, describing it as essential to the future of the country. Even though they claimed that it wouldn’t cost the tax payer as it will be funded by sukuk, no investors will subscribe to the sukuk for an asset that does not have predetermined and specific revenues unless it is guaranteed by the government. 

Plans announced including the National Recovery Plan and the National Recovery Council were mostly opaque.

Yes, almost every country across the world struggled to contain the current Covid outbreak, but in Malaysia, the challenges appear particularly acute. Like all countries that don’t produce vaccines, the country scrambled to secure doses in the preceding months. 

The country’s initial vaccine rollout faced complications due to overriding interests and inability of the government to listen and seek advice from the practicing medical fraternity. After being slow to act, the government scrambled to respond. Mega PPVs were set up ramping up of vaccinations.
 
The government fast-tracked emergency approval for anti-Covid vaccines used in Western countries and China and were complaining about inequitable access to the vaccines ordered, only for a month later announced that 14 million Sinovac vaccines are for sale to the commercial sector. 

While authorities moved to close public amenities and parks, disallowed dine in, mandated face masks in public and tightened quarantine requirements for businesses, the virus was already rampant in settings where social distancing wasn’t possible, the foreign workers sector. 

It takes little imagination to comprehend the heightened health risks faced by these people - dense urban communities without adequate housing, unsafe and unsanitary conditions, poor ventilation, overcrowding and limited access to health services. Infections can easily spread amongst them across multiple workplaces, affecting people in those workplaces, staff and the community. 

The risk of an outbreak amongst the foreign workers is always high due to its numbers where the unaccounted apparently are 3 times more than those legally brought in for work.

The growth of the private health system in Malaysia over the last 20 years indirectly led to the public health system to continue to degrade. Within a mix landscape of private healthcare terrain with underfunded public hospitals, access to these hospitals now depend on one’s own capacity to develop workarounds, personal networks and ties to powerful people who lean on hospital officials or top administrator to provide beds – characteristics that has worsened the country’s pandemic scenario in a disastrous way. 

It remains to be seen in the weeks ahead how it will withstand the anticipated upswing in infections and whether our health system will withstand this or the people will continue to experience the same sense of helplessness and frustration.

The Greater Klang Valley Special Task Force implemented an online system of triage to track and assign hospital beds.

Outside the Klang Valley and big cities, middle-aged and elderly people ­– who are generally illiterate or semi-literate  – tend to believe that Covid is not a serious illness, given that the first wave in 2020 did not amount to much in these areas.  Thus, distancing is generally not practiced in daily life, and community transmission is now widespread. 

Public-health measures such as EMCO in these areas reinforce the fear of stigmatisation of being identified as Covid positive. It is therefore understandable that they decline testing, and pass off their coughs and fevers as just a cold. Now that community transmission is widespread, contact tracing becomes mostly a matter of encouraging close contacts to self-isolate.

There is no doubt that the prime minister has lost enormous support, across the country, over his government’s mishandling of the crisis. From failing to anticipate the fifth wave, as defined by a private medical practitioner and prop up the health infrastructure accordingly, the government appears not just tone-deaf but wilfully intent on denying the enormity of the infection. Now, there are suspicions that the government is minimising the casualties. 

Moving forward, the present ineptitude has cruelly increased Malaysia’s dependence on foreign investments and swept away all illusion that we can grow based on domestic demands. 

We might be a democracy but presently and moving forward, the country is too fragmented to be governed efficiently. The economic growth seen over the years are everywhere, but those things that happen well happen because of its people, not because of the government.

We need our leaders to set a positive example and not let Malaysians themselves to draw on their own strengths and resources as seen from the white flag movement, amongst others.

They should be clear that they will not allow personal ideology to colour facts or dismiss evidence that does not fit with their preconceived notions. 

And they must be courageous enough to engage honestly with the new promises and challenges of besetting the country now and in the future. – July 31, 2021.

* FLK 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.