Dr Khor Swee Kheng said Putrajaya needs to be clear on its targets as a zero Covid-19 target may not be achievable.
He said the infections need to be kept at manageable level, the same level as malaria, HIV infections and others diseases to avoid overwhelming the healthcare system.
This can only be done by managing people’s trust and behaviour, not by restricting activities under movement control order, he added.
“(To achieve this) we need a predictable government with no flip-flops and SOPs that are easy to understand,” he said, adding that a lot of teamwork was needed to keep the numbers down.
Khor was speaking at a “Healthcare Resilience: Malaysia’s Year into Pandemic -Tried and Tested” webinar, organised by the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia.
Khor, a visiting fellow at ISIS Malaysia said targeted and more coherent SOPs are needed, with no double standards in enforcement.
He added that SOPs should not be changed frequently as the government then needs to spend time explaining the changes.
Khor said the government needs to be transparent with data. “Another advantage of being transparent is that people will not take the pandemic for granted,” he added.
Another way of not overwhelming the healthcare system, he said, was by dividing cases into five stages, with those in the first three stages to be placed at quarantine centres or hotels while the complicated cases in stage 4 and 5 can be treated in hospitals.
“For stage 4 and 5, we need to look at our hospital capacity at district level,” he added.
Khor said non-Covid-19 cases are also being delayed to cater for the increasing infections.
While the country could see tangible data on the rate of jobless Malaysians or the economy, he said the level of burnout being experienced by frontliners is not known, he said, adding that the mental health of frontliners should not be taken for granted.
Wan Nadiah Wan Yaakob, the chief executive officer of Thomson Hospitals Sdn Bhd, said the pandemic needs to be controlled so there are enough beds.
“In Klang Valley, we are seeing a shortage of beds right now, even though this is where the resources are,” she said.
She said one way of changing people’s behaviour was by stopping the top down approach.
“We should communicate at the ground level why they need to isolate themselves, wear masks and the importance of ventilation.
“If they don’t understand, the compliance level will go down,” she said.
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