Khairy has succeeded in reducing the upsurge of Covid-19 cases and deaths, but at too slow a rate as compared to Indonesia, leaving Malaysia still wrestling with the longest Covid-19 wave in the world since September last year

Monday, October 18, 2021, will be the half-way mark of the first hundred days of the new Health Minister, Khairy Jamaluddin.

On that day, we could have exceeded or be very near to a cumulative total of 2.4 million Covid-19 cases and 28,000 Covid-19 deaths.

This makes the prospect of keeping the cumulative total of Covid-19 cases below 2.5 million cases and the cumulative total of Covid-19 deaths below 30,000 during Khairy’s first Hundred Days on Dec. 7 quite a tall order and unlikely to be achieved.

On Dec. 7, 2021 (Khairy’s first Hundred Day) we are very unlikely to return to January 11, 2021, when emergency was declared to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, and we had 2,232 daily new Covid-19 cases and four Covid-19 deaths.

Malaysians must acknowledge Khairy’s successes in reducing the upsurge of Covid-19 cases and deaths during the Emergency period, as we are no more in world’s Top Ten countries either for daily new Covid-19 cases or Covid-19 deaths, and we are no more overtaking other countries with the most cumulative total of Covid-19 cases.

But the reduction is at too slow a rate and we are still wrestling with the longest Covid-19 wave in the world which started in September last year.

Indonesia reached its daily peak in its present wave on 15th July, when it recorded, 56,757 new Covid-19 cases but it was able to reduce this five-digit to triple-digit numbers in less than three months when it recorded 894 cases on Oct. 10, 2012.

But Malaysia had been stuck with having more than 6,000 Covid-19 cases for three-and-a-half months since June 29, 2021.

Yesterday, Indonesia recorded 915 new Covid-19 cases and 41 Covid-19 deaths while Malaysia had 7,420 cases and 89 Covid-19 deaths.

Khairy must come up with a new, nimble and appropriate policy and strategy to win the war against the Covid-19 pandemic and reduce the daily increase of new Covid-19 cases to double-digit numbers and the daily Covid-19 death rate to single-digit numbers.