With daily new Covid-19 cases down to 10,959 cases, the next targets are to descend to four-digit numbers and to go lower than the 4,000 cases Malaysia was supposed to be in three months ago

The daily new Covid-19 cases was down to 10,959 cases yesterday – the lowest for two-and-a-half months since 13th July 2021.

This is the best news for Khairy Jamaluddin since he was sworn in as the new Health Minister on August 30, as before July 13, the daily new Covid-19 cases were in four-digit numbers.

Now the next targets for Malaysia are to descend to four-digit numbers and go lower than the 4,000 cases of new daily cases that the country was supposed to be in three months ago under the National Recovery Plan.

Unfortunately, Malaysia’s descent to 10,959 cases, hopefully signifying the decline of Covid-19 cases to four-digit and then three-digit numbers, have been eclipsed by three events:

Firstly, Malaysia passing the 2.2 million-mark for cumulative total of Covid-19 cases yesterday, threatening to overtake Ukraine to be ranked No. 19 among nations in the world with the most cumulative total of Covid-19 cases;

Secondly, Malaysia’s continued high Covid-19 death rates, with 258 Covid-19 deaths yesterday (with 75 Brought-in-Dead Covid-19 deaths), raising the cumulative total of Covid-19 deaths to 25,695 Covid-19 deaths. At this rate, Malaysia would have more than 26,000 Covid-19 deaths by the end of this month.

Thirdly, Malaysia’s drop in daily new Covid-19 cases have been completely overshadowed by the even more dramatic declines of Covid-19 cases and deaths in other countries, resulting in Malaysia have more daily Covid-19 deaths than Indonesia (118 yesterday), Thailand (101), Vietnam (174), India (137), Brazil (169), Turkey (206), France (74) and United Kingdom (40).

Yesterday, Malaysia was the world’s Top No. 4th country in daily Covid-19 deaths, losing out only to Russia (779), Iran (289) and USA (264). This is an area which needs Khairy’s urgent attention!

Even in daily new Covid-19 cases, Malaysia has lost out to Indonesia, which had fallen from the peak of 56,757 cases on July 15 to 1,300 cases yesterday, while Malaysia is trying to engineer a descent from the peak of 24,599 cases on 26th August to four-digit numbers. Indonesia has declined to four-digit daily new cases for a whole month and looks set to decline to three-digit numbers before Malaysia.

We have also lost out to Thailand and Vietnam, which had respectively 10,288 and 9,362 daily new Covid-19 cases yesterday. India had fallen from its peak of 414,433 cases on May 6 to 16,697 cases yesterday - a reduction of 96 per cent!

Is it too much to expect the Malaysian peak of new daily cases of 24,599 cases on 26th August to be reduced to three-digit figures?

Lets hope that with the lowest daily new Covid-19 cases in two-and-a-half months marking the launch of the 12th Malaysia Plan by Prime Minister Ismail Sabri in Parliament yesterday, the only way for daily new Covid-19 cases in Malaysia to go is down and not up!