Why has Malaysia’s daily new Covid-19 cases increased from 3.5 times to 5.7 times that of Indonesia in the 26 days Khairy Jamaluddin had been the new Health Minister?

Yesterday, Malaysia recorded 14,554 new daily Covid-19 cases and 250 daily Covid-19 deaths, while Indonesia recorded 2,227 new daily Covid-19 cases and 144 Covid-19 deaths.

This is the 37th consecutive day that Malaysia had more daily new Covid-19 cases than Indonesia since August 18, 2021, and except for two days since Sept. 6, 2021, Malaysia had more Covid-19 daily deaths than Indonesia for 16 days. For the last seven days, daily Covid-19 deaths in Indonesia have been below 200 cases.

In contrast, Malaysia is still struggling to reduce the daily new Covid-19 cases to below 14,000 cases and the daily Covid-19 deaths to below 300 deaths. In fact, in the past fortnight between 11th to 24th September, Malaysia’s daily Covid-19 deaths had ranged from 116 deaths on 23rd September (the only day it fell below 200 deaths) to 592 deaths on Sept. 11, 2021.

It is a deplorable state of affairs that so far, there are no answers from the Ministry of Health why Malaysia’s daily new Covid-19 cases increased from 3.5 times to 5.7 times that of Indonesia in the 26 days Khairy Jamaluddin had been the new Health Minister?

The daily Covid-19 death situation is even worse. On August 30, Malaysia’s daily Covid-19 death figures were 52% that of Indonesia, but on September 24, Malaysia’s Covid-19 deaths figures were more than 73.6% that of Indonesia!

Today , we will become the world’s No 20th country with the most cumulative total of Covid-19 cases, when 12 months ago, we were ranked No 89.

The first step for Malaysia to become a world-class great nation is to break away from the ranks of the world’s worst-performing nations in the Covid-19 pandemic by demonstrating that Malaysia could do better in the Covid-19 pandemic than Indonesia, a country which has more than eight times Malaysia’s population.

But Malaysians are still waiting for such signs.

Yesterday, among the 250 Covid-19 deaths, there were 49 Brought-in-Dead (BID) death cases.

The Health Ministry should devise a strategy where the daily BID Covid-19 death cases are below ten cases, and not as high as 161 BID Covid-19 death cases on Sept. 22. Malaysians await the Health Minister announcing such a new strategy.