As Covid-19 fatalities rise, Anwar says some deaths could’ve been avoided if vaccine had arrived as planned

 

Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim said Malaysia’s Covid death rate, which had climbed up rapidly from single digits to triple digits since March, might be avoided if the government has succeeded in rolling out the vaccine as initially planned. ― Picture by Ahmad Zamzahuri

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KUALA LUMPUR, June 3 — Pakatan Harapan chief Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has tonight slammed the Perikatan Nasional (PN)’s government perceived slow action in rolling out Covid-19 vaccines which also contributed to the hundreds of deaths in the past few months.

Anwar said Malaysia’s Covid death rate, which had climbed up rapidly from single digits to triple digits since March, might be avoided if the government has succeeded in rolling out the vaccine as it was initially planned.

“If we receive the vaccine as promised, in March and April, we will not reach the current situation.

“Now I want to know who will be responsible? The government? Minister?” Anwar asked on a Facebook stream.

“Because there is an uncle or brother or sister who died that may have been avoided if the vaccine was received early.

“But because of this scramble, the long awaited tests, the contract scramble. I don’t know. So it happened this way. Then we want to avoid the problem of having a MCO (movement control order),” he added.

Anwar, who has actively spoken up against the government’s lack of testing and cooperation to the private and state government for vaccination also voiced his concern over the rising death toll in a study by the Institute for Health Metric and Evaluation (IHME) of the University of Washington in the United States which predicts death tolls in Malaysia could go up to a staggering 26,000 in September in its current trajectory.

“So who will be responsible for these deaths?

“Don’t say this is ‘takdir’. That ‘takdir’ is due to the careless and irresponsible treacherous leadership that led to such catastrophe,” he said, using the Malay word for “destiny”.

Anwar who is the PKR president and Port Dickson MP said he also wants the PN government to explain and share to the people the reasoning as well as planning for the exit strategy with the current implementation of MCO 3.0.

He claimed that the government has been very vague in its implementation of the aid and way out of the current mess as Covid-19 case are still more than 7,000 per day and triple digits deaths daily.

“We want to hear their plan, we want to know if we have a two or three weeks of MCO, how much will there be a reduction in cases? What are their plans?

“(PN) Leaders must provide an explanation so that we know for what PKP what the projections are and when to come up with a credible solution.

“Another thing in this solution, let us not be arrogant and do not want to listen to experts and studies related to science and data,” he said.

The total number of deaths from Covid-19 in the country has surpassed the 3,000-mark today, as Malaysia records 103 deaths in the last 24 hours. -malaymail