Give us evidence of Delta variant in Parliament, says Kit Siang

 

DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang asks health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah if he is trying to ‘frighten the MPs’.

PETALING JAYA: DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang has taken health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah to task for saying that four Covid-19 cases at Parliament House are most likely from the Delta variant.

Describing Noor Hisham’s statement as “most unfortunate”, Lim asked him whether he had the evidence, or was it just to “frighten the MPs”.

Yesterday, Noor Hisham said the health ministry had recommended that all parliamentary sittings be suspended for two weeks, citing high infectivity rates after a Covid-19 outbreak was detected in Parliament on Thursday.

Lim said Noor Hisham should prove that his statement was based on medical facts.

“There were 11 cases out of 1,183 (Parliament) staff. If all 1,183 were tested, then the positivity rate is about 1%, which is nowhere near superspreader status.

“The other justification for superspreader possibility is a new variant? Were genomic studies done? If so, what are the results?” the Iskandar Puteri MP asked in a statement today.

Lim said “the Parliament proceeding of fully vaccinated MPs” should continue.

“The prime minister is fully vaccinated. Why is he not coming to Parliament to answer all the questions the country is asking?” he asked.

Earlier, in a separate statement, Lim said the July Bloomberg Covid Resilience Ranking, which placed Malaysia in the 52nd spot out of 53 countries with economies of more than US$200 billion, was the “final nail in the coffin” over the failure of the emergency and the government’s strategy in the war against the pandemic

He noted that Malaysia had been ranked 16th in January.

“We have fallen from 16th to 52nd, the next lowest, in the Bloomberg Covid Resilience Ranking. Although Indonesia is ranked 53rd and last, we have four times higher daily cases per million population than Indonesia,” he said. - FMT