Critical contact tracing strategy missing from Adham's Parliament speech - Pua

 

Health Minister Dr Adham Baba has been criticised for avoiding the “find, trace, test, isolate and support (FTTIS)” strategy, during his speech in Parliament yesterday.

In a statement today, Damansara MP Tony Pua said it was “completely surreal” that Adham’s 55-minute speech did not mention FTTIS even once when it was a critical component of the National Recovery Plan (NRP), outlined in Chapter 10.

The NRP report had stated that Covid-19 infectivity rates can be reduced by at least 40 percent when 80 percent of close contacts are traced and quarantined within four days of isolating the index case.

Pua argued that FTTIS was the single most important strategy in Chapter 10 with a focus on “mass expansion of testing”.

Adham, said Pua, never briefed Parliament on how this strategy will be implemented and instead read out testing numbers carried out to date.

“There was zero mention on the testing strategy going forward,” said Pua, who has lately been releasing statements almost daily to shine a spotlight on “positivity rate”, which averaged at 11.39 percent over the past week.

The World Health Organisation had recommended that governments run enough tests to keep the positivity rate below 5 percent.

Pua said that if the FTTIS strategy was critical to the success of the NRP, then the role of the Health Ministry was to implement the strategy.

“Our biggest concern now, however, is the fear that the NRP, while well-intended and contains critical strategies like FTTIS, the health minister and his ministry are unaligned and living on another planet.

“That will ensure another failure by the current Perikatan Nasional government in battling the Covid-19 pandemic and ensure that the rakyat’s misery will be further compounded,” he said.

Pua said that if Adham cannot align himself with the NRP, the latter should resign or be sacked and replaced with a competent minister. - Mkini