As Covid-19 cases surge in Malaysia, an urgent and important question is being hotly debated in the media: is Malaysia ready to deal with it?
Being ready means two things. One, the government must do everything within its means to prevent endemic Covid-19 from becoming an epidemic again.
Equally importantly, the people must take responsibility for staying safe from the disease. Start with the government. Is it ready?
Three years ago, Malaysia was unprepared for a reason. Covid-19 was unknown, like "x" in the mathematical equation.
Today, the government, or at least the Health Ministry, is in a better position to find a solution for "x". Or at least it should be.
Granted, Covid-19 mutates and every time it does that, a new variant comes into being. Malaysia is said to have more than 20 variants, including Omicron, Beta and Delta.
There are four variants of interest, and we have them all. Infectious disease experts have been telling us for a long time that a spike in seriously ill Covid patients is preventable.
This, the government can do by reducing hospitalisation. Getting people inoculated, especially the vulnerable, and encouraging them to mask up are two steps that can reduce hospitalisation.
To be sure, there will always be sceptics who will question the efficacy of vaccines, with the side effects being reported and acknowledged by medical experts. But this is for the Health Ministry to comfort the doubters, not to brush them off. To dismiss their concerns only increases scepticism.
Being ready also means having the manpower and materials ready for the surge in hospitalisation. Early care, a hospitalisation prevention step, means more primary care doctors. But a spike in the resignations of medical officers will pose a challenge in containing Covid-19 surge.
After registering two and three figures in earlier years, resignations of medical officers — all on contract — hit 1,354 last year, according to numbers crunched by CodeBlue, a public health news portal.
Government hospitals are also running short of specialists, nurses and other public health staff. Overcrowding of non-Covid-19 cases at emergency departments is another sign of the ministry not having the right manpower-patient ratio.
The lessons of the past three years tell us that staffing of public health services needs a surge.
But the people can't fold their arms and leave everything to the government. Vaccination and the wearing of masks aren't mandatory, but we must opt for them. Because these are two of the most effective ways to avoid being infected with the debilitating virus.
Another is to stay away from crowded and poorly ventilated areas, at least until the virus is contained. And those who suspect that they have been exposed must get themselves tested.
Early detection of Covid-19 helps in the treatment of the disease. We know from experience that the virus is deadly and it spreads like wildfire from host to host. The best prevention is to do everything within our means to avoid being infected by the virus.
If we do none of the preventive measures, then we are choosing to be infected. It may sound like a harsh judgment, but it is true. True, choice is about freedom, but it must be exercised wisely. True freedom is to choose the good for oneself, not the ones that harm us.