New rules for recovery plan will give wrong impression, says PSM

 

PSM warned that relaxing movement restrictions without any input from health experts could increase the number of Covid-19 infections.

PETALING JAYA: The government’s decision to relax movement control restrictions and head into the next phase of the national recovery plan based only on the number of Category 3,4 and 5 Covid-19 infections is a backward step, says PSM.

It could also prove detrimental to the country, the party’s secretary-general A Sivarajan said.

For one, he said the number of Covid-19 infections in these “serious” categories were lower compared with the total number of infections.

This will give a false impression that the current health crisis is not that serious, Sivarajan said.

He warned that Category 1 and 2 Covid-19 patients could progress to Category 3,4 and 5 in the span of 10 days and this could not be predicted.

“So to ignore the total number of infections and focus only on Category 3,4 and 5 cases is being irresponsible.

“It also gives the public the impression that the situation is improving and that they can return to normal,” he said in a statement.

Yesterday, Tengku Zafrul Aziz, the coordinating minister for the national recovery plan, said new benchmarks based on the number of daily hospital admissions of Covid-19 patients had been set for states to progress from one phase to another.

Tengku Zafrul said that a risk assessment to consider the opening of economic and social activities “will be more accurate if based on the number of symptomatic cases of categories 3, 4 and 5, rather than referring to the number of new cases daily”.

Sivarajan warned that relaxing movement restrictions without any input from health experts could increase the number of infections.

“We have already breached the 20,000 mark in terms of daily infections and also reported over 200 deaths in a day.” - FMT