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NST Leader: Covid-19 crusade not over

IT is heartening that in recent days, Malaysia’s daily Covid-19 infections have gone down to double digits. The Movement Control Order (MCO), enforced since March 18 and twice extended until April 28, appears to have made strides in breaking the coronavirus’s chain of transmission.

Kudos to our frontliners, who have toiled night and day, battling to keep Covid-19 at bay. But, let’s not be jumping for joy just yet — because, as Health director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said: “The war has not yet been won; we have not seen the end of Covid-19.”

That’s a matter of fact. The crusade is far from over. Just check out the global figures. Covid-19 cases have upped exponentially, at more than 2.5 million cases and deaths at 178,558 as of 6pm yesterday. On Tuesday, more than 90,000 people worldwide had contracted the infection in a single day. And some 80 per cent of the positive cases are in Europe and the United States.

China, which reportedly had “beaten the coronavirus”, is now recording new cases, and so is South Korea and Japan. On April 18, cases in Japan topped 10,000, and the government ordered a nationwide state of emergency, which its prime minister, Shinzo Abe said, was necessary “to invoke a sense of urgency” to prevent the virus’ spread across porous city borders. Glaringly evident is Singapore, which was known as “the global standard bearer” for subduing the contagion in its early days. It had done everything right after recording its first case on Jan 23. The government had shut the borders to populations likely to carry the virus, and provided free testing and treatment. But schools and universities were still open and businesses were on as usual. Over the past few days, however, the cases had more than doubled, at more than 10,000 cases up to yesterday. On Tuesday, the republic extended restrictions until early June.

Our MCO is scheduled to end in five days from today, but recent developments may see it being extended further, which is a good thing, say healthcare practitioners, government officials and businessmen. Epidemiologists want the MCO extended on a staggered basis, until the end of May, or until there are no positive cases recorded over a certain period. Most Malaysians are echoing the health director-general’s “the fight against Covid-19 must continue”.

This Leader agrees. We must not let up. The battle must be won. We are grappling with a calamity that is fluid. Reportedly, there are now three mutated strains of Covid-19 — A, B and C; Malaysia may have the C strain, tests are still being done. Also, a vaccine has yet to be found. Let’s take a leaf from the past — in 1918, Philadelphia, the US, prematurely ended its quarantine from the flu pandemic to hold a parade to boost morale for the World War 1 effort. Some 200,000 people lined the streets on that late September day. Within 72 hours, the state’s 31 hospitals were filled with the sick and infirm. Thousands had died from the flu and its complications within days.

Continue to fight we must, until the enemy is vanquished.

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