CORONAVIRUS | Former prime minister Najib Abdul Razak has urged the Malaysian government to emulate the approach taken by South Korea in carrying out free mass testing for Covid-19.
"The approach taken by South Korea is different from that of other countries.
"South Korea, with a population size of 51 million people, has managed to control the rise of the Covid-19 cases without carrying out strict curfews or restrictions on movements.
The country is taking steps to provide free screening to anyone who wants to test," said Najib in a Facebook post today.
He said that so far South Korea has made over 300,000 tests for Covid-19 compared to 15,196 such tests in Malaysia.
According to the latest reports, South Korea has 8,961 cases of Covid-19 with 111 fatalities. This is a fatality rate of 1.2 percent which compares favourably with other countries that ranked among the Top 10 most affected by the disease.
"I still think that free mass screening should be a top priority of the Malaysian government.
"I believe the cost of giving a free screening to anyone who wants to be tested gives far greater returns than other measures taken by the government," said Najib, who as Pekan MP is a backbencher in the PN administration.
"The government says the total cost to implement each screening is around RM700 per person. This means the total cost of implementing 15,196 screening so far is around RM10.6 million."
"Let's say we manage to reduce the cost of screening to RM500 per person, the total cost of screening for 1 million people is RM500 million," he said.
Najib said Malaysia's total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was RM1.4 trillion last year or about RM3.8 billion a day.
"So what is the cost of RM500 million compared to the returns we get if we are able to accelerate the recovery of our country's economy?"
Najib said the cost per Covid-19 screening is decreasing right now as more and more companies around the world are introducing Covid-19 test kits that are cheaper and easier to use.
He called on the government to reduce the cost of the screening and the time taken to carry it out. He also urged the administration to increase its capacity to carry out the screening.
Najib also suggested that the government consult private medical companies to jointly provide free screening to everyone in Malaysia (including foreigners regardless of whether they have a valid presence in the country or not) who wants to be tested because they believe they may be exposed to the Covid-19.
He also called on the government to financially assist those under self-quarantine with food and essentials during the quarantine period.
"Anyone who violates this quarantine period should be imprisoned," said Najib who served as prime minister from 2009 to 2018.
- Mkini
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