The first was the news report that downgraded Malaysia to tier-3 in this year’s US State Department’s Trafficking in Person report.
Although the PH government managed to carry out some sweeping changes, the defection of several Members of Parliament was enough to cause the collapse of the PH government, and a new government led by a new coalition, Perikatan Nasional, came to power in late February 2020, just before the pandemic hit Malaysia and the rest of the world.
Malaysia, despite the imposition of emergency and later on with stricter movement control measures, was probably the only country that saw both numbers of cases and deaths rise at an alarming rate. Obviously, with the rising number of cases, the healthcare system too was challenged to the limit in its ability to handle the pandemic.
Covid-19 changes all that. We now know for sure that we have inadequate supplies, be it in the form of number of beds or even ICU capacity. In a report by the World Health Organisation dated July 11, 2021, Malaysia is reported to have 1,322 ICU-bed capacity for Covid-19 patients but this includes an estimated 350 beds at private hospitals.
Figure 1 shows the weekly positivity rate in Malaysia since early May 2021 when the rate started to spike up. From just about 5.1% in early May, the positivity rate crept up higher and higher and over the last five days, the average passed the 10% mark at 10.29%. While to reach 100% inoculation rate for all adults by October this year is a tall order, it would nevertheless be an achievement even if we reach 80% by then. We can then join the likes of the United Kingdom and even the United States with much more confidence in opening up the economy fully.The combination of a weak political platform and a mounting health crisis leads to another crisis – an economic crisis.
From this figure, one could even conclude that the impact of members withdrawing their retirement savings under the Employees Provident Fund, which has already reached RM78bil even before the i-Sinar scheme , will be more than the government’s own direct fiscal injection. On the healthcare sector, while Malaysia spends a considerable sum on it, the development expenditure component is rather small. Looking at the last two year’s budget allocation, the healthcare sector received some RM30.6bil and RM31.9bil in 2020 and 2021, respectively. The headline numbers are rather misleading as only about 7.7% and 6.5% for the two years were allocated for asset purchases while supplies and services make up 37% and 38% of the total amount.
This is not possible if the country is still rule by the oldies that's still dominating the local political scene.
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