KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 4 — DAP’s Lim Kit Siang today urged the Malaysian government to not emulate the United States (US) in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic.
Lim said Malaysia faces the same fate as the US, which currently has 21,081,796 cases and 360,033 fatalities, if cases here continue to increase daily.
He pointed out that Malaysia is now 10 positions ahead of China, the country where the pandemic first started, with a total of 119,077 cases and 494 fatalities compared to China’s 87,117 cases with 4,634 fatalities.
“If Malaysia cannot be a China in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, let us not be a United States of America,” he said in a statement.
The Iskandar Puteri MP said that the crowded New Year’s Eve celebration on the streets of Wuhan, ground zero for the coronavirus pandemic a year ago, showed significant difference of the two countries’ fight against the virus.
Lim said that Malaysia lagged behind nine of its peers in Asia — namely Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Thailand and Bangladesh and was only ahead of four Asian countries: Pakistan, Indonesia, Philippines and India in the December 2020 Bloomberg Covid Resilience Ranking.
“Can we do better in the January 2021 Bloomberg Covid Resilience Ranking?
“Is the Covid-19 pandemic on the priority agenda in the first Cabinet meeting in 2021 as the first quarter of the year looks quite grim for Malaysians?” he asked.
Lim also warned that the much-hyped arrival of Covid-19 vaccines are not a panacea to the pandemic.
Yesterday, Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said Malaysia reported 1,704 new Covid-19 cases, bringing the total to 119,077 cumulative cases since the pandemic began last year.
He also said the country recorded 11 more Covid-19 fatalities.
