KJ: Don't obsess with daily Covid cases, other indicators help give clearer picture

 

Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said he did not want to see people becoming obsessed with the daily Covid-19 cases as other indicators must also be taken into account in order to get an accurate picture.

This was amid the Health Ministry's move to discontinue providing a breakdown of daily cases by states during its afternoon updates. Only the national daily cases are provided.

Instead, the breakdown is now published at midnight on CovidNow, the government's Covid-19 tracking portal.

"A number of countries have already stated that in the future, they will no longer be reporting daily cases.

"We are still following the World Health Organisation's recommendation for daily cases to be reported.

"It's just that now we don't want to focus on the daily numbers. I've asked Health Ministry director-general (Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah) to summarise the numbers together with other indicators at midnight so that the people aren't obsessed with the numbers," he told an interview with Astro Awani.

However, Khairy stressed that the government was not taking the number of Covid-19 cases lightly.

"It does not mean that we are taking them lightly or don't care about the total daily cases.

"It's just that it needs to be read with other figures such as hospital admissions, deaths, intensive care unit admissions and others.

"That, for us at the Health Ministry, gives us a more accurate picture of the status of the pandemic," he said.

Self-test before returning to hometown

In the interview on television, Khairy also urged people to self-test before returning to their hometown.

This was amid the lifting of the interstate travel ban effective tomorrow as 90 percent of the adult population is now fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

This is based on the population census of 2010. The latest census, due in 2020, is incomplete due to the pandemic.

Khairy cautioned that older people with chronic diseases were more vulnerable to Covid-19.

As such, he said those returning home should self-test out of a sense of responsibility even though it is not mandated by the government.

Khairy added that police will be conducting random checks to ensure compliance with the standard operating procedures (SOPs).

However, he said the police won't be setting up roadblocks at every state crossing as it was impractical and would cause traffic congestions. - Mkini