The think tank said the recent daily numbers showed that Malaysia had wasted one year due to the government stubbornly insisting on ineffective measures like the movement control order.
“We urge the government to openly admit that the current containment approach, based on the one-policy-fits-all approach, has failed.
“It is time to recognise that we need a targeted strategy like the one advocated by the Great Barrington Declaration”, said its chief executive officer, Carmelo Ferlito, in a statement.
This declaration was a petition signed by health experts worldwide calling for protection to be focused on the high-risk group while the non-vulnerable get on with their lives during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Ferlito said a targeted protection approach would allow the country to save resources in generalised subsidies and to invest more where it is needed — hospital beds and research for long-term treatment.
He believed a targeted-protection approach would allow for faster achievement of immunity while, at the same time, saving lives and jobs.
He said the government should focus on mortality, adding that to get sick is not the main issue, but to survive is.
“With a survival rate of 99.63%, Malaysia is scoring well. But now we need to focus on a protection strategy for those who fall into the 0.37% mortality rate.
“A containment strategy needs to be focused on protecting categories at risk, while allowing the stronger part of the population to have a normal life, eventually get infected and develop immunity,” he said.
Ferlito warned that delay in returning to normality, including travelling, will have a major impact, especially on the poorer segments of the population, adding that lockdowns are regressive.
Further, he asked the government to release detailed data on the age and medical conditions of the people who had died of Covid-19.
“This data can help the population to individually assess their risks.”
Today, the health ministry reported 2,195 new Covid-19 cases.
Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the total number of infections now stands at 375,054. A total of 1,378 people have died from the virus.
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