Malaysia will overtake China in cumulative total of Covid-19 cases in less than two weeks if Covid-19 cases in Malaysia continues to increase as in the past week which averages 1,210 cases a day

Malaysia will overtake China in cumulative total of Covid-19 cases in less than two weeks if Covid-19 cases in Malaysia continues to increase as in the past week, which averages 1,210 cases a day.

Malaysia with 70,236 Covid-19 cases is today No. 82 among countries in the world with the most cumulative total of Covid-19 cases while China is ranked No. 75 with 86,585 cases.

Malaysia and China is now separated by seven places, whereas the separation is greater by over 60 positions. On Sept 1, for instance, China had 85,058 Covid-19 cases while Malaysia had 9,354 cases.

Since the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in Malaysia caused by the Sabah state general election, the surge in Covid-19 infections have enabled Malaysia to close the gap with China, which was for over two months the Top No. 1 nation with Covid-19 infections to a position today when Malaysia will overtake China in less than two weeks if we continue in the present Covid-19 trajectory.

It is time that Malaysia finds out what has gone wrong with Malaysia strategy to win the invisible war against the Covid-19 pandemic, to the extent that we are overtaking China in cumulative total of cases, when China has over 40 times the population of Malaysia – China’s 1.4 billion as compared to Malaysia’s 32 million.

Indonesia, which has 275 million population, has cumulative total of 563,680 Covid-19 cases, which works out to 2,052 Covid-19 cases per 1 million population – which is lower than Malaysia’s 2,158 Covid-19 cases per 1 million population. China has 60 cases per 1 million population.

While Malaysia’s Covid-19 epidemic is serious, we are not in the league of the 14 nations which had over a million cumulative total of Covid-19 cases, namely: United States of America, India, Brazil, Russia, France Spain, United Kingdom, Italy, Argentina, Colombia, Germany, Mexico, Poland and Iran.

The United States have a very high cumulative total of 44,410 per 1 million population although it loses out to Qatar which has a cumulative total of 49,734 Covid-19 cases per 1 million population, Bahrain which has 50,753 cases per 1 million population and Luxembourg which has 58,732 cases per 1 million population.

There is now a vaccine-mania in the world.

Although the Covid-19 vaccine is poised to be approved and distributed in the coming weeks all over the world, it is not going to alleviate the record levels of infections and hospitalizations in the United States, which has suffered nearly 15 million Covid-19 infections and over 285,000 Covid-19 fatalities.

It is shocking to Malaysians that Joe Biden’s message in his Inauguration Speech as United States President on January 20 is going to ask Americans to wear masks for 100 days.

The world has passed the 66 million mark for cumulative total of Covid-19 cases and is heading towards the 100 million mark, which will probably be reachd in Joe Biden’s 100 days as US President.

Lim Kit Siang MP for Iskandar Puteri