Malaysia is the only country in the world where the number of Covid-19 infections has risen during a state of emergency, said Najib Razak.
“After three months of emergency to battle Covid-19, the number of new infections has reduced slightly while the number of deaths and ICU cases are higher.
“Also higher are the number of new clusters and active clusters. So, too is the RO rate,” said the former prime minister on Facebook today.
The R0 is a projection of how many people on average each new Covid-19 patient would infect.
Najib said Malaysia is not the only country to declare a state of emergency to contain the coronavirus outbreak.
“But we are the only country in the world where the Covid-19 situation has become more dangerous after three months of emergency,” said the Pekan MP.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin again had to assure the people that the emergency was in effect solely to curb the outbreak.
He said emergency powers enabled the government to fast-track the necessary legislative measures for the management of Covid-19.
“This covers matters related to the use of private hospital assets, temporary land ownership, buildings or private hospital moveable property and to allow the use of private hospitals to treat Covid-19 patients.
“So please be assured that there is no sinister motive behind the declaration of emergency,” he said at a dialogue session with industries organised by the International Trade and Industry Ministry yesterday.
Najib today accompanied his post with a graph showing 2,232 new infections on January 11, the day the emergency was declared, and yesterday’s numbers, which stood at 2,148 new cases.
The table showed there were four deaths from the virus on January 11 compared to 10 yesterday. The number of ICU patients had also risen to 212 from 187 while there were 346 active virus clusters yesterday compared to 258 on January 11. – TMI