The government's decision to lift the conditional movement control order (MCO) on many states and to lift the interstate travel ban despite a high number of Covid-19 cases, shows that it can no longer contain the coronavirus outbreak, said former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak.
In a Facebook post, Najib opined that the government's aim had shifted from fully breaking the chain of infection to mitigating the outbreak while waiting for the vaccine to arrive in Malaysia.
"It's hard to say whether this new approach is right or wrong.
"The reality is that the country's economy couldn't hold on any longer and the people could no longer stand the continuous conditional MCO," said the Pekan MP.
He expected the government to further lift the restrictions on many economic sectors and social activities in the near future.
However, he warned that Malaysia has topped Indonesia in terms of the number of cases per capita, and Malaysia was also expected to surpass the number of total cases in China in the next 10 days.
"Malaysia had recorded 2,234 cases per one million people as compared to 2,096 cases in Indonesia (per one million people)," he said.
As a consequence, Najib said it would be difficult for other countries to allow their citizens to visit Malaysia for a holiday, and the same is also true for Malaysians to visit other countries.
On Saturday, Defence Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob announced that interdistrict and interstate travel would be allowed beginning today (Dec 7) in the whole country except in enhanced MCO areas.
Elaborating, Najib stressed that following the new approach, the government has to make sure that Covid-19 treatment and quarantine facilities are adequate.
He added that the government had to put in more effort to negotiate with other vaccine suppliers to ensure that the people would get vaccinated as early as possible next year.
This came after drugmaker Pfizer, a company which the government had signed an agreement with, said that it needed to slash its target for Covid-19 vaccine doses due to supply chain challenges. - Mkini
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