Health workers collect swab samples to test for Covid-19 at the Selcare Clinic in Shah Alam August 1, 2021. — Picture by Yusof Mat Isa
KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 6 — DAP stalwart Lim Kit Siang today asked the Ministry of Health (MoH) to reveal the number of Omicron and Delta Covid-19 variants from Malaysia’s daily new Covid-19 cases.
In a statement, Lim said that he had spoken to a health expert on the matter, to which the expert revealed that this information can help guide health policies and restrictions, especially with the Johor state election in view.
“The problem that Malaysia faces presently, is that although the disease pattern seems to suggest Covid Omicron infection, it does look like there are still pockets of Covid Delta around.
“The MoH should be encouraged to do more genome sequencing so that we may know the proportion of Delta to Omicron infection,” said the health expert to Lim.
The health expert then alluded to Lim that Malaysia can expect daily cases to rise in the next three to four weeks before peaking and slowly declining.
“In the UK and Denmark since the governments are confident that Omicron is predominant, they have removed all restrictions and allowed the countries to return back to normal. Denmark even declared that the pandemic is over.
“The good news is that this Covid-19 pandemic is coming to an end. The Danes are rather optimistic, I think. Things can still go wrong as we are always worried about new variants which may surprise us,” the expert told Lim.
Lim said that the optimism of the health expert is also bolstered by the low mortality rate among Asean countries.
Yesterday, Malaysia saw 9,117 new cases recorded, a steep hike from the previous 7,324 cases.
Following this, Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah urged the public to get the booster jab, as the number of Covid-19 cases in the country is predicted to increase further in the coming days.
“Our daily Covid-19 cases continue to rise as predicted in the next couple of days and weeks. Yesterday, 99 per cent were in category 1 and 2. More importantly, please go for your booster dose ASAP. This chart below clearly shows you why,” Dr Noor Hisham tweeted, sharing a screenshot of the chart from the CovidNow portal run by the Ministry of Health (MoH).
The data on the CovidNow website also showed Malaysia recorded another 14 deaths due to Covid-19 in the past 24-hours, bringing the total number of those who died due to the pandemic here to 32,025.