KUALA LUMPUR: The Movement Control Order should be extended for at least until the end of next month to enable health services, which have been burdened by four-digit Covid-19 daily infections since last month, to return to manageable levels.
Public health expert Dr Malina Osman said while pushing the number of daily infections to two digits might seem unrealistic at this point, what's important was the authorities' commitment and public compliance to restrict movement, with an outright ban on social gatherings.
"Hopefully, we can push down the daily case load by 30 or 50 per cent of the current numbers during this period."
She, however, said all sectors of the economy should be allowed to continue operating with adjustments to the current standard operating procedures (SOPs) under MCO 2.0.
And the backbone of this, according to the Universiti Putra Malaysia associate professor, was a good system of monitoring clusters, public surveillance and enforcement.
"Agencies under the NSC can ensure that no one breaches the SOP, especially with regard to travel bans, besides ensuring that the rules are standard for every Malaysian, VIPs or otherwise.
"The Department of Occupational Safety and Health must also step up to the plate and ensure that employers caught flouting SOPs on workers' housing and other matters are made to bear the full force of the law," she told the New Straits Times.
Dr Malina said vigilance and self-discipline by communities with regard to SOPs in places of worship such as mosques should also be made clear.
"The most important thing here is to follow SOPs, everything else is secondary," she said, adding that with the right SOPs and adherence to the guidelines, even pasar malam could be allowed to open.
On whether a full six-week lockdown would be most effective to slow the infection, with only the most essential of businesses and services allowed to operate, epidemiologist Datuk Dr Awang Bulgiba Awang Mahmud said what's important was to give the current MCO time to produce results.
"Cases we are starting to see now were detected during the start of MCO 2.0 on Jan 13.
"So if we stop now when new cases are supposed to be declining, then we risk seeing the numbers going up again," he said.
"There is not much point in having any form of MCO when it is not strict enough and not enforced long enough to make a difference.
"And if we stop now, people would have suffered for nothing and new cases would then go up again.
"Since cases have not really come down, we need to give time for the MCO to take effect so that frontliners have the (adequate) tools to do their job," he told the New Straits Times.
The Universiti Malaya professor said he did not understand how the Health Ministry could arrive at a projection of double-digit cases in May.
Dr Awang believed the current strategies seemed not to have been working the way they should because there had been lack of enforcement and monitoring.
"Look at Sabah and how for months it was struggling with hundreds of new daily cases while facing policy flip-flops, lack of direction and other issues.
"If we continue with that approach, we may be looking at a very prolonged period (of movement restrictions) where we eventually run the economy into the ground, while not able to control the infection either," he said.
The Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry's Covid-19 Epidemiological Analysis and Strategies Task Force chairman said generally, frontliners were now being let down by a lack of coherence and clarity in strategies with the MCO having squandered precious time, resources and sacrifices.
He also called on the government to ramp up testing for migrant workers at places where they converge as well as other venues that can enable a "superspreader" to spark a new chain of infections.
This, he said, was also to boost the country's targeted testing approach while slowing the infection rate faster.
"We cannot test everyone at the same time as we do not have the capacity for mass testing.
"But if we are guided by targeted/opportunistic testing, then we would have logically been able to detect carriers and prevent the spread of infections that could have exploded into the rate and magnitude of clusters that we are seeing today."
He also said boosting tests would also boost the efficacy of contact tracing exercises and vice-versa.