Will Malaysia overtake China with more cumulative total of Covid-19 cases before or after the end of the present Parliament meeting?
Today, December 1, 2020, marks one year since the first known patient showed symptoms of the disease in the Hubei provincial capital of Wuhan, China, according to a key study on the Covid-19 epidemic in the Lancet medical journal.
The question we should be asking is whether Malaysia will overtake China with more cumulative total of Covid-19 cases before or after the end of the present Parliament meetng – Dewan Rakyat on Dec. 17 and Dewan Negara on Dec. 23, 2020.
The Covid-19 epidemic started in China.
When the World Health Organisation on March 11 declared Covid-19 a pandemic, it said there were more than 118,000 cases in 114 countries with 4,291 fatalities.
In actual fact, the global cumulative total of Covid-19 infections on March 11, 2020 had reached 148,822 cases by that day, with 80,793 cases in China which is more than the rest of the world. However, by next day, on March 12, the number of Covid-19 cases outside China (81,392 cases) had exceeded the cases in China (80,813 cases).
Spain was the first country to exceed China’s total cumulative total of Covid-19 cases on 18th March, when Spain had 81,179 cases as against China’s 80,928 cases on that day.
The second country was the United States on March 26, when it registered 89,683 cases as against China’s 81,340 cases on that day.
The third country was Italy on March 27, when it registered 86,488 cases as against China’s 81,394 cases on that day.
Since then, China’s position among the country with the most number of Covid-19 cases has slipped drastically although it was the top No. 1 nation in the first three months of the pandemic to the present No. 71 ranking with 86,530 cases – losing out in particular to 12 countries which have over a million Covid-19 cases, viz:
- United States – 13.9 million
- India – 9.5 million
- Brazil – 6.3 million
- Russia – 2.3 million
- France – 2.2 million
- Spain – 1.7 million
- United Kingdom – 1.6 million
- Italy – 1.6 million
- Argentina – 1.4 million
- Colombia – 1.3 million
- Mexico – 1.1 million
- Germany – 1.1 million
Today, the world has reached 65.3 million Covid-19 cases and nearly 1.5 million fatalities – and the pandemic is still undergoing a surge of infections.
Malaysia, which is ranked 83 in the world with 65,697 Covid-19 cases, is quickly closing the gap with China.
Assuming China keeps to the low single or double-digit daily increase, and Malaysia keeps to a four-digit daily increase, Malaysia will overtake China in three weeks, which will before the end of the Dewan Negara meeting on Dec. 23.
If Malaysia keeps to the average daily increase in the past seven days, which works out to 1,305 daily increase, then Malaysia will overtake China in 16 days, i.e. before Dewan Rakyat ends on Dec. 17.
Going back to the WHO declaration of Covid-19 as a pandemic, it is clear that the Malaysian Government has failed to act on the advice of the WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to adopt am “all-of-government” and “whole-of-society” in the war against the Covid-19 pandemic.
It is no credit to the Malaysian government that we are on the verge of overtaking China on cumulative total of Covid-19 infections!