The 136 Covid-19 deaths in Malaysia in the past week confirmed survey that over half of Malaysians viewed Putrajaya’s handling of Covid-19 pandemic as dismal

The 136 Covid-19 deaths in Malaysia in the past week has confirmed a survey that over half of Malaysians viewed Putrajaya’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic as dismal.

When emergency was declared more than a year ago to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, there were 2,232 new daily cases and 4 daily Covid-19 deaths

Yesterday, Malaysia recorded 27,831 new Covid-19 cases and 21 Covid-19 deaths – a loud testimony of the failure of the emergency to combat the Covid-19 pandemic.

Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore are three countries which have registered record daily new Covid-19 cases, but have to reach a new Omicron peak.

Will the daily peaks of the Omicron cases in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore be like India, which was lower than the Delta peak, or like the Philippines which is about one-and-a-half times the Delta peak, or like the United States, UK and Germany where the Omicron daily peak is three times the Delta peak or worse of all, like South Korea where the Omicron peak is more than 11 times the Delta peak or Hong Kong where Omicron peak is about 30 times that of the Delta peak?

This is yet to be known, but the 136 Covid-19 deaths in Malaysia in the past week must be reduced as a matter of urgency and priority by the Ministry of Health.

The Health Minister, Khairy Jamaluddin should take serious note and respond to the the survey by the Singapore-based ASEAN Studies Centre at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute that Putrajaya’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis was rated negatively by Malaysians respondents with 51.8 per cent labelling the government’s response as “poor” or “very poor”.

The perception over the government’s response also deteriorated sharply, with 24.4 per cent of respondents rating it “very poor” for the 2022 as compared to 0.9 per cent in the 2021 report.

In comparison, just 10.4 per cent of respondents rated the response as “well” and 22.2 per cent said it was “adequate” in 2022.

This was also a decline compared to the result in 2021 when there had been 14.5 per cent for “well” and 40.2 per cent for “adequate”.