Painful to track Malaysia’s poor performance in ASEAN in Covid-19 pandemic particularly in losing out to Indonesia in both daily Covid-19 caseload and daily Covid-19 deaths in the past month

It is painful to track Malaysia’s poor performance in ASEAN in Covid-19 pandemic particularly in losing out to Indonesia, a nation with eight times the population of Malaysia, in both daily Covid-19 caseload and daily Covid-19 deaths in the past month.

For the last 18 days, Malaysia had been losing out to Indonesia in both categories.

For the past seven days, for instance, Malaysia’s daily new Covid-19 cases were 13,899, 13,104, 10,959, 11,332, 12,434, 12,735 and 11,889 cases while that of Indonesia were 2,137, 1,760, 1,390, 2,057, 1,954, 1690 and 1,624 cases.

The daily Covid-19 deaths for Malaysia in the past seven days were 228, 278, 258, 240, 209, 192 and 121 deaths while that of Indonesia were 123, 86, 118, 124, 117, 113 and 87 deaths.

For the past fortnight, Indonesia is struggling to transition from four-digit to three-digit numbers for daily new Covid-19 cases and from three-digit to two-digit numbers of daily Covid-19 deaths (succeeding for one day on 26th September when it recorded 86 deaths), while Malaysia is struggling to fall to four-digit numbers below 10,000 cases for daily new Covid-19 cases while for daily Covid-19 deaths struggling from 121 daily deaths to 487 deaths during the period.

Yesterday, we lost out to Thailand in daily Covid-19 deaths. Malaysia had 121 deaths while Thailand had 123. But except for 2nd September, when Malaysia had 249 daily Covid-19 deaths and Thailand 262 daily Covid-19 deaths, Malaysia had lost out to Thailand on both daily new Covid-19 cases and daily Covid-19 deaths.

For Vietnam, Malaysia has lost out from Sept. 1 on daily new Covid-19 cases for the whole period, while in daily Covid-19 deaths from Sept. 1, Malaysia lost out in seven of the 31 days since Sept. 1.

The only ASEAN nation which Malaysia had performed better in the Covid-19 pandemic in both categories is the Philippines.

This is a most unsatisfactory performance as Malaysia boasts of one of the best healthcare system in the region.

An explanation from the new Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin as to why Malaysia is performing so poorly in the Covid-19 pandemic in ASEAN is warranted.