NSC bungled by allowing travel when ‘per cent positive’ was high, says DAP man
Published on: Saturday, January 23, 2021
By: FMT
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PETALING JAYA: The National Security Council (MKN) failed in the fight against Covid-19 by allowing interstate travel at a time when the national “per cent positive” rate was still too high.
“Per cent positive” is a figure which represents the proportion of all tests that return positive against the total number tested.
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Bangi MP Ong Kian Ming said that data provided to the World Health Organization (WHO) and published online showed that Malaysia’s “per cent positive” rate had been over 5% since Nov 6, which the body says is the threshold for easing restrictions.
“Why did MKN allow for inter-state travel from Dec 7 last year under the conditional movement control order (CMCO)?
“Could this have contributed to the spike in the number of cases, especially given the high number of travellers to tourist spots like Langkawi during the end-of-the-year holidays?”
According to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, “per cent positive” is a measure that indicates how widespread an infection is in a particular area and whether testing is keeping up with transmission.
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Ong cited the opening of state borders as another example of the lack of consistency on the part of MKN when it came to public policies on fighting the pandemic.
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“The Perikatan Nasional government has once again failed to convince the public that it has a consistent, coherent and comprehensive plan to control this pandemic.”
