KUALA LUMPUR, April 18 — DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang has questioned the logic behind Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba’s statement that a fourth Covid-19 wave will not happen in Malaysia unless the current third-wave numbers hit zero.
He urged Dr Adham to “stop his game of semantics” and concentrate on addressing the sharp rise in daily Covid-19 infections to more than 2,000 cases in recent days or resign if the situation is beyond his capabilities.
Amid fears of a fourth Covid-19 wave, Dr Adham had said yesterday that this can only occur if domestic transmissions in the current third wave reach the ‘baseline’ or zero, before a spike is recorded again.
“The Health Minister, Adham Baba, should stop his game of semantics and focus on checking the rise in the daily increase of Covid-19 cases and bring it down to double-digit figures or resign!” Lim said in a statement this morning.
“He said that the fourth wave of Covid-19 pandemic in Malaysia will not happen unless cases involving domestic or local transmission record zero in the current third wave before the number of cases increase sharply the next day.
“Going by Adham’s definition of the fourth wave, that it can only occur when the country has succeeded in zeroing cases in the third wave, then there will never be a fourth wave in Malaysia.
“Can Adham state how many days in the past year had the daily increase of new Covid-19 cases in the country been zero case?” Lim asked.
In his statement today, Lim chided Dr Adham for failing to quell Malaysians’ concerns about the country’s Covid-19 situation.
“A strong case could be made that Malaysia would have been spared the second and third waves of the Covid-19 pandemic (let alone the fourth wave) if the Sheraton Move conspiracy had not toppled the legitimate, competent and democratic Pakatan Harapan government at the end of February 2020.
“For more than a year of the Covid-19 pandemic, Malaysia is the only country in the world which had operated without an effective and credible minister of health, who had incapacitated himself with a series of fiascos like ‘warm water cure for Covid-19’, ‘500 countries’ and ‘15 states in Malaysia’ gaffes.
“Now he has excelled himself, by claiming that Malaysia will not face a fourth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic unless the third wave in Malaysia recorded zero case in daily increase first!
“How ‘smart’ the health minister in fighting the fourth wave — by claiming that it will not happen because the third wave is still here, although it can be worse than in the past,” Lim said.
Lim then suggested that Dr Adham’s comments are fuelling the perception among Malaysians that the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government has handled several key issues poorly, namely the Covid-19 pandemic and flagging economy.
Yesterday, 2,331 new Covid-19 infections were reported across the country, marking the third consecutive day that daily case numbers have breached the 2,000 mark at a time when the government had projected that the situation would be under control.
In addition, the latest Bloomberg Covid Resilience Ranking monthly report dated March 25 indicated that Malaysia is trailing behind Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, China, Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong and Vietnam in the war against the pandemic.
