Shafie calls for RM5 billion extra on Covid-19 testing and tracing

 

Warisan president Shafie Apdal says 360,000 people should be tested every day for 60 days.

KOTA KINABALU: Warisan president Shafie Apdal has urged the federal government to allocate an extra RM5 billion or more to expand Covid-19 contact tracing and monitoring of the vaccination programme.

“The only way to save the economy is to curb the Covid-19 epidemic and the only way to do this is with comprehensive screening measures and tracing, before vaccinations are carried out,” he said.

“We should not be too frugal with these two things,” he said in a statement today.

Shafie, who is the MP for Semporna, said the high positive Covid-19 test rate of 6% indicated that many more positive cases were detected because of the lack of screening tests.

He said a rate below 5% was the World Health Organization standard to show that the outbreak is under control.

“We need to target screening tests of at least 360,000 people every day, compared with 64,000 today. The cost to maintain such a level of screening for a period of 60 days would be RM2.5 billion while the 2021 budget only allocates an additional RM475 million for screening tests,” he said.

He said there was a need to increase contact tracing and monitoring as well as the provision for more frontline staff.

He said Daegu city in South Korea, with a population of 2.4 million people successfully curbed Covid-19 after 2,400 additional health workers were appointed. “This means we need to appoint 33,000 additional staff in Malaysia,” he said. However, the Permai stimulus programme provides for only 3,500 people. - FMT