PETALING JAYA: The current movement control order (MCO) cannot be deemed a success because its mere existence is a product of the government’s failures, a former deputy health minister has said.
Dr Lee Boon Chye said the need for repeated nationwide MCOs during the Covid-19 pandemic reveals the shortcomings of public health measures, namely poor contact tracing, a lack of mass testing and inefficient isolation of cases.
“An MCO is the last resort when more targeted public health measures fail. It is the result of failure and not success,” he told FMT today.
He was responding to comments from Bersatu information chief Wan Saiful Wan Jan, who said yesterday that the recent decline in daily Covid-19 case numbers and the infectivity rate falling below 1.0 showed the effectiveness of the lockdown.
“If every close contact can be identified, tested and isolated within 48 hours, all outbreaks can be curbed,” Lee, the Gopeng MP, said.
“Covid-19 does not appear suddenly, each new case must come from being infected by someone else.”
Despite the government’s initial success in managing the pandemic during the first MCO in March 2020, he said, the Perikatan Nasional-led government had since failed to emulate those results.
Lee also took aim at Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, who he said had failed to lead the country through the pandemic, with thousands of Covid-19 casualties and many more in dire straits.
“The country is at war with the virus. In times of war, all available resources should be diverted to fight the war.
“All departments that are less relevant during the pandemic should be restructured so additional resources are diverted to the health ministry to assist the vaccination programme,” he said. - FMT
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