Former deputy health minister Dr Lee Boon Chye said any move to reopen the borders needed to be consistent with the nation’s overall Covid-19 strategy, adding that if the aim was for zero Covid-19 cases, this was not an option.
However, the Gopeng MP said, most countries have been unable to adopt a “zero Covid-19” policy, including Malaysia, especially with the emergence of the Delta variant.
“Malaysia’s Covid-19 strategy is more like mitigating the impact of Covid rather than eradicating it. It means accepting some degree of ongoing transmission while protecting the vulnerable population by vaccination and treatment.
“Once the adult population is mostly vaccinated, the number of serious illnesses and mortalities will be reduced, as is going to happen soon.
“If we allow fully vaccinated Malaysians to move freely, people who are fully vaccinated should also be free to move in and out of the country, except with some quarantine measures,” he told FMT.
On concerns over other Covid-19 variants, Lee said Delta was the most infectious and deadly mutation so far and was already the dominant one in Malaysia.
“However, in the event that there are new variants of concern which are either more deadly, more infectious or more resistant to vaccines, then appropriate control measures for passengers from the sources are needed, including banning (them).”
Federation of Private Medical Practitioners’ Associations Malaysia president Dr Steven Chow also backed the proposal, pointing to other nations that have already embarked on it.
Chow said it was time for the authorities to quit being in denial as the still-high numbers showed that the past four months of lockdown and keeping the borders closed did little to lower daily cases.
“Mass vaccinations have brought down the ICU rate and the rate of severe disease requiring hospitalisation. This is a good sign.
“The vaccination programme must be decentralised and ramped up at a community-based level, such as through general practitioners and Klinik Kesihatan, and medical NGOs roped in to conduct outreach vaccination in remote areas,” he told FMT.
He said Malaysia should emulate other nations which have opened its borders with mandatory testing on arrival followed by more tests within the incubation period.
He added that these nations also had a good and dependable contact tracing system, which can be done in Malaysia too.
“The old approach has not been shown to work. People have to go back to work. Something must be seriously wrong if after more than a year, the simple act of going to work so that you can earn money to feed your family can be a crime.”
Former deputy international trade and industry minister Ong Kian Ming had said Putrajaya should consider reopening the international borders both ways in order to help the tourism sector bounce back faster.
He said the government could allow fully vaccinated people in Malaysia to exit the country without having to apply with the immigration department even if it was to go on holiday, while limiting travel to countries that were safer in terms of the pandemic.
“When they come back, they can undergo the proper quarantine protocol. This would help the airline industry. We can also open the borders up to tourists who are fully vaccinated from countries like Singapore or New Zealand, even if it’s not reciprocal,” said Ong.