Today is Malaysia's 100th day of being under the Movement Control Order 3.0. Have we made progress since March, when the daily tally of Covid-19 cases started spiking? Unfortunately, no. Cases are still spiking and Thursday's record high of 21,668 infections, 318 fatalities and 93 brought in dead, make for a dreary state of affairs.
A consolation, though, is that Malaysia's adult population is now 40.7 per cent vaccinated, which means more than 9.5 million people are fully immunised against Covid-19. It is hoped that by October, all adults will be inoculated.
But why are cases and deaths still increasing? Frustration does not even begin to cover the gamut of emotions the people are feeling — anger, worry, fear, disappointment. Anger, at the continuous failure to stem the tide, worry and fear of being the next statistic, and disappointment that despite all the efforts, we have still not been able to bring the numbers down. Surely, schools cannot reopen next month with such damning numbers? Adolescents aged 12 to 17 years old have yet to be vaccinated, although it was announced yesterday that vaccinations for them would begin by mid-September. Would it not be safer to wait until all adolescents are fully vaccinated before they return to school? After all, 116,378 children were Covid-19 positive as of June 29, and of the figure, 37,205 were aged 13 to 17.
Back to the question, how do we bring our numbers down? Unfortunately, Malaysia is not alone as cases in other countries have also risen anew. In the United Kingdom, 196,047 people were infected in the past week, which is 7 per cent more than the week before and the highest rolling seven-day total this month. In the United States, more than 98 per cent of residents now live in an area where there is a "high" or "substantial" risk of Covid-19 community transmission, according to CNN.
It's despairing, but we cannot allow Covid-19 to overwhelm us. The government may want to regroup and reassess the situation — what we did right and where we went wrong. For instance, the scene where crowds of people waited in line to be vaccinated, this cannot recur or it would throw a spanner in the good work the government has done thus far.
This Leader calls on the public to rally together to bring our numbers down. How did India do it? In May, its daily cases peaked to more than 400,000 and several thousand deaths. But on July 23, the country reported 41,383 infections and 507 deaths, a far cry from what it was just two months before. Reportedly, India "beat it by coming together". It was a community effort at all levels, especially the grassroots. People, young and old, came forward to help by donating food, water and oxygen tanks to hospitals and quarantine centres. Teenagers as young as 15 created social media groups to look for oxygen supply and channel it to the places most in need. Why not Malaysia?
We have our share of philanthropists, Samaritans, non-governmental organisations, selfless individuals, members of parliament and assemblymen. What's stopping us from going all out to help the nation when times are bad?