Sin Chew Daily

The Emergency decree and the nationwide lockdown have very limited effects on our ongoing battle against the coronavirus, but that does not give us an excuse to give up.

We need to muster our energy all over again to fight the virus, and get all Malaysians to go for vaccination, enhance our awareness in self protection with the hope we can see a turning point come this October.

January 12, His Majesty Yang di-Pertuan Agong accepted the government's proposal to declare a state of Emergency until August 1 to allow the government to concentrate on stopping the spread of the virus.

Back then the Palace pointed out in a statement that the Emergency decree could be lifted early if the pandemic situation was under control.

If we were to do a nationwide survey at that time, at least 80% of Malaysians would have said they believed the pandemic could be contained before August 1, given our three-pronged strategy of Emergency, MCO (and the subsequent nationwide lockdown) and national immunization program.

Indeed, we couldn't find any reason for failure!

For the next 194 days from Jan 12 to July 25, the pandemic has not improved at all but has actually gone out of control, culminating in the record 17,045 new infections recorded this Sunday, at an average of 521 new cases for every one million people.

So far we have seen 15 straight days of five-digit daily increases. With well over a million cumulative cases, we are now ranked 30th globally!

If we were to take daily new infections and deaths as benchmarks for the country's performance in battling the virus, we could easily conclude that the Emergency has failed very badly.

For the 334 days to Jan 11 just before the Emergency went into effect, the country had reported a cumulative total of 138,224 confirmed cases at a daily average of 414, and 555 deaths at a daily average of 1.67.

But for the 194 days since the Emergency was proclaimed until this Sunday, we reported a total of 875,214 new cases at a daily average of 4,511 cases, along with 7,439 deaths at a daily average of 38.4.

In other words, we had 10.9 times more new cases and 23 times more deaths each day after the Emergency compared to before.

This pandemic is not going to end anytime soon, meaning the cumulative total of 1,013,438 cases and 7,994 deaths as of this Sunday could as well be just an intermediate point in this whole pandemic.

Firstly, we must come to the terms with the fact that COVID-19 is not going to vanish completely, not just because the virus keeps mutating but it also finds natural hosts in bats, civets, cats, dogs and other animals. Smallpox is now extinct because it can only spread from human to human, while the plague is still very much alive because it can spread to humans from rats and fleas.

As such, living with virus over the long term is most definitely not just a slogan but more of an essentiality. But how are we going to live peacefully with the virus?

There are two ways we can choose: to get ourselves inoculated and to reinforce our self protection.

Secondly, mass vaccination is the only solution to significantly reduce the incidence of severe illnesses and deaths among COVID-positive individuals.

As of this Sunday, we administered almost 17 million vaccine doses, with 35.2% of adult population having received one dose of the vaccine and 16.5% two doses, with a daily administration of 450,000 doses.

However, five months after online vaccination registration was open to the public, some 30% of Malaysia's adult population still have not registered themselves for vaccination!

Minister Khairy Jamaluddin has said the vaccination rate could peak in August and the 80% herd immunity goal could be achieved earliest by October. This will mark a major turning point in the country's battle against the virus, provided that 100% of the country's adult population participates in the immunization program.

The ratio of Israel's positive COVID-19 cases to its population is 9.3%, triple of our 3.1%. Once a severely hit country, Israel has only registered 294 deaths since end of March, thanks to its rapid vaccine rollout. This number is barely 4.6% of the total since the onset of the pandemic in that country!

The UK lifted its lockdown restrictions on July 19. Prior to that, the country's COVID-19 mortality rate on June 1 was 2.85%, but this percentage has now been brought down dramatically to only 0.11% today. Again, thanks to the vaccines!

Thirdly, we need to strengthen our self protection awareness.

Experts worldwide are very consistent in the notion that everyone must remain highly alert of the surroundings besides staying at home, wearing mask and regularly sanitizing our hands, because everyone around us could be a potential virus carrier. There could be virus lurking in objects that we come into contact with.

Once this has become a habit, it will be natural for us to remain highly alert at all times, which is one of the ways to stay clear of the virus.

More than a year now, it is time for us to change our mentality: while we look to the government to help bring the virus under containment, more so we need to depend on our own selves to achieve this end.

Don't let our obstinacy deprive us of an invaluable opportunity to immunize ourselves, and give the virus a free passage to our bodies because of our oversight.