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NST Leader: Virus returns to China

BEIJING in China has just proven that the second wave of Covid-19 infections is real. All it took was 55 days of free movement for the deadly disease to hit back with a vengeance. The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus, or SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, was traced to the Xin Fa Di Nong food market in Beijing. The city authorities had detected the virus on some chopping boards used to cut imported salmon. As salmon is not known to carry the virus, the source must be from elsewhere. The market is closed and under police watch and so are parts of the capital city. If a second wave can happen in a country where control measures are said to be harsh, the so-called "free" world may want to be on higher alert. Staying safe is getting difficult. We must not only watch where we go and how we get there, but also who we meet. And what we eat. There is many a slip between the fork and the lips.

The yellow-for-alert light must be on here, too, now that we are riding on the metro and omnibus to work and play where social distancing is a tough act. Blame it on economics for disturbing the lives-livelihood balance. To be fair, it is an agonisingly difficult choice to make for any country. If it is all health and little wealth, the government must have a very deep pocket. Trillions of ringgit may not last too long. Even the RM295 billion has been a coffer-draining exercise. If it is all wealth and little health, the death toll will be in the hundreds of thousands. This is uncharted territory for rich and poor alike. Never has a pandemic closed the global economy down so simultaneously. As the world, Malaysia included, loosens the economic noose a knot at a time, our alertness must move in tandem.

There are things that the government can do and there are things we must do. We cannot wash our hands off (forgive the pun). Take the Wuhan wildlife market where the first wave of the virus started. Granted, regulators could have done a better job enforcing the wildlife ban. But it is the people, the peddlers of wildlife such as snakes and civet cats and wildlife meat consumers, who brought them into human contact. Otherwise, the virus may have remained in the horseshoe bats in Xinjiang caves where it was first detected. The Xin Fa Di Nong food market story may not be much different. It is never the chopping block or the salmon. Some human's design or negligence has to be behind it. And that is where we need to start. "Wash your hands" and "mind the gap" may get on our nerves, but they do keep us safe. Let's not forget, Malaysia is still reporting infections. Our death toll, too, has reached a disturbing 121. SARS-CoV-2 is invisible. Even to the asymptomatic human host. Beijing reported 45 such cases. They are here, too. Unbeknown to him, the asymptomatic host who rides the Rapid bus, visits the bookshop, supermarket and everything in between, passes the virus to people whom he comes into contact with. This makes tracing critical. But some businesses are giving short shrift to tracing by not strictly enforcing the contact register. Our regulators mustn't allow this to happen. Apathy costs lives.

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