There was euphoria in the United Kingdom on Wednesday. With zero death from Covid-19, the UK plans to ease the restrictions on June 21.
But, the situation in Malaysia continues to be dire with confusion over vaccine procurement, low sign-up rates due to fear of the vaccines and a failing campaign to test and trace potential victims.
Putrajaya needs a new National Blueprint and a grand strategy to give teeth to the current lockdown to combat the pandemic. Mental and physical fatigue are affecting frontliners and the wider populace.
Hospitals are overstretched. Shipping containers have been converted into mortuaries. Unless the government mobilises general practitioners and gets help from private hospitals, the situation is likely to worsen. The plan to use 1,000 more clinics as vaccination centres by the end of July is well thought of.
The nation also needs walk-in-vaccination centres like in Singapore. Make it easy for people to get the vaccination. China, the United States, UK, Australia, Singapore, South Korea, Greece, Spain, Germany and Italy, for example, have turned the corner and are showing strong signs of recovery — economically and health-wise.
The difference lies in their ability to come to grips with the situation very early. Their leaders had the foresight to invest in vaccines. They also demonstrated strong political leadership while testing and vaccinating as many people as possible quickly.
More significantly, they won over the information warfare in the cyberspace. Although we have not lost the war in the social media space, we have lost a few battles.
We should have jabbed more than 10 per cent by now. The plan to vaccinate 200,000 a day by July will certainly help ease the burden on the frontliners who need fresh bodies to relieve them before burnout sets in.
We should open the floodgates for approved vaccines and allow the people to make their choice. Learn from Thailand, which has offered alternative vaccines for its people.
At the same time, we need to empower doctors in every district to vaccinate. The federal government should only control the price of the vaccines and provide oversight for misuse. All this requires removing red tape and relaxing federal-state relations.
The key to winning the pandemic is fast vaccination, a strong leadership and creativity.
The notion of life and livelihood needs to be revisited. The primary target must be to save lives first. Our strategy should also refocus on winning the hearts and minds of the rakyat.
An exit strategy is indispensable to any National Blueprint. It must be reasonably flexible and one that caters for a post-pandemic environment to ensure non-recurrence.
In the US, after president Trump fumbled, President Biden led the charge against Covid-19. He and his team of scientists and others succeeded to flatten the curve.
Boris Johnson was initially unpopular with his harsh policies in the UK. His perseverance led to where they are today: zero death on Wednesday.
Choose whichever ministry to be in charge, but because of poor coordination, the rakyat received conflicting instructions even on a simple thing like who should be quarantined and who should not.
Clarity of objectives together with policies to achieve them are essential, whether in countering an insurgency or beating Covid-19. Without unity of command and purpose the war against the communists, insurgencies would have taken a longer time to win.
In hindsight, the war would not have been won without the decision by the political masters to recognise China, who had been giving support to the insurgents. Once the ties were cut, the local communists had no choice but to surrender.
We also need predictability. For example, it would be useful for Putrajaya to set a date on achieving a minimum level of herd immunity. Similarly, a date to start vaccinating children is equally important because no one is safe until everyone is vaccinated.
The government must overcome pockets of resistance to vaccination by addressing the root causes. There must be a strategy to win over vaccine rejectionists by persuasion, not by ridiculing them.
This war against Covid-19 requires total commitment. A whole-of-society and a whole-of-government approach needs to be quickly developed to regain trust, confidence and support.
The writer is a keen student of geopolitics