PETALING JAYA: The government’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic needs to be more transparent and open, say doctors and an economist, citing the lack of data about activities on the ground.
Speaking at a webinar entitled “Covid-19: Seeking Solutions”, Dr Musa Nordin of KPJ Damansara Specialist Centre said it was frustrating that people had to source for Covid-19 data on Malaysia through overseas reports.
“When the prime minister gave his announcement two days ago, we saw the most data ever in terms of the capacity of hospitals.
“Why was this not revealed much earlier?,” he asked, as a panelist on the webinar which was organised by the Edunity Foundation and G25, a group comprising former senior civil servants.
Dr Narimah Awin, who was former director of the health ministry’s family health development division and moderator of the event, said Malaysians deserved more information beyond the daily numbers and clusters announced by health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah every day.
“Data is useless until it becomes information. And it is not important until you transform the information into knowledge. With that wisdom and knowledge, you can form opinions,” she said.
Economist Jomo Kwame Sundaram said there were official statistics about unemployment in Malaysia, but noted that there was nothing on how these people were coping amid the pandemic.
He claimed that the Statistics Department had attempted to run some surveys in the early months of the pandemic, but were discouraged from continuing their study or publishing the results.
“We have very little idea about what’s happening on the ground and in many parts of the country,” Jomo said.
Former health deputy director-general Dr Christopher Lee said the government should adopt a more intersectoral approach for more people to come in and help manage the impact of the pandemic.
“They must be meaningful engagements. We also need to hear from a lot of other ministers, not just the ones we are currently hearing from,” he said.
Lee added that it was up to the country’s leaders to plan policies that were pragmatic enough to be carried out on the ground and to encourage greater cooperation from the public.
With regard to the Covid-19 vaccine, Musa said it was safe, efficacious and did not contain any poisonous or non-halal substances.
He also said the biggest threat from the vaccine would be anaphylaxis, a serious allergic reaction, but noted that the chances of dying from this were one in 303,000, as compared with the one in 250 people who are dying from Covid-19 in Malaysia.
“We need to get our safety issues in perspective. More people are likely to die of Covid-19 than develop rare side effects from the vaccine.”
Musa added that more than 100,000 participants have safely taken part in clinical trials, the most number of people ever involved in the development of a vaccine.
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