From Michelle Low

Fear is necessary for survival. When our brain identifies an event as a threat, our sympathetic nervous system goes into overdrive to prepare our bodies for a fight.

Once the threat has been eliminated, our parasympathetic nervous system steps in to return our brain and bodies to a state of calmness.

However, prolonged exposure to a threat with no possible way out will leave our bodies and brain in a constant state of restlessness and inhibit our ability to survive.

Hence, the resilience built on the #sayajagasaya (I take care of myself) mentality, aside from fear, stress, and anxiety, has left Malaysians stuck on a rollercoaster ride of movement control order (MCO), conditional MCO, and recovery MCO with no clear end in sight.

If Malaysia wants to safeguard its rakyat from another year-long exposure to stress, anxiety, and fear, Malaysia must learn from the success and failures of other countries.

The global pariah to a role model: Italy

Once the epicentre of Covid-19, Italy is now in control of the virus and has transformed itself into a model for the rest of the world. Its weekly X-ray of the country’s health by local health officials, hospitals, and doctors has allowed the National Institute of Health to execute suitable and effective policies.

Besides that, the Italian Parliament’s decision to declare a state of emergency meant that the government had the power to introduce and maintain stringent restrictions.

Are you positive or negative? Test, track, and trace in South Korea and Taiwan

Greatly affected by the MERS outbreak in 2015, South Korea and Taiwan opted to adopt a nationwide “testing, tracing, treating” model as they believed that testing is the cornerstone for controlling the Covid-19 pandemic.

Eradication, not containment: New Zealand

In mid-March 2020, New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Arden’s administration made the tough decision to close its borders, make quarantine compulsory for all returnees, and developed a Covid-19 response alert plan which included a full lockdown. Though drastic, Arden made it abundantly clear from the onset of the pandemic that New Zealand’s goal was not to contain the spread of the virus but to eradicate it from the country.

Roadmap out of lockdown: England

At the start of 2021, England entered its third lockdown and unlike the first two lockdowns, British prime minister Boris Johnson shared with the Britons his roadmap out of lockdown. In his roadmap, Johnson informed Britons that each phase of the roadmap has a tentative date.

However, the date may be subject to change based on the number of active cases, the progress of the nation’s vaccination programme and the containment of any new variants within the country. The SOPs for each phase of the roadmap out of lockdown was clear and concise.

The outcome speaks volumes

Although the measures taken by Italy, South Korea, Taiwan, and New Zealand received internal and external criticisms, the outcome spoke volumes.

Italy has successfully denounced its global pariah status, Taiwan and South Korea have been relatively successful at containing the virus, and New Zealand is one of the most successful countries to have contained and eradicated Covid-19 from its country.

Moreover, England’s roadmap out of lockdown clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of an approach that empowers its people to be well informed.

As such, the Malaysian government should take cognisance of England’s roadmap out of lockdown while the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme may want to consider introducing an interactive heat-map function to the HIDE system.

The interactive heat map can be adapted from algorithms of interactive political risk, terrorism, and/or political violence risk maps where localities in Malaysia may be designated red, yellow or green colours based on the probability that these locales may develop into hotspot for Covid-19 clusters.

By introducing a heat-map function, the rakyat will be informed why a specific premise or area is included in the HIDE list and from there, make an informed decision on whether they want to visit the listed premise or area.

Moreover, the interactive heat-map will also provide business owners more time to prepare the necessary logistics for any potential closure of premises, for sanitation purposes.

Lastly, as Malaysia rolls out its vaccines, the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme and the health ministry must succinctly communicate the viability and risks of each vaccine for the different groups of rakyat in a timely manner. This is to ensure that an infodemic about the vaccines does not deter the rakyat from being vaccinated.

Although it remains unclear how the pandemic will unfold in Malaysia and the rest of the world, if the government chooses to grant our brain a breather through delivering some opiate sense of certainty and standardised routine, Malaysians may be able to rebuild their resilience on the foundation of #kitajagakita, trust, and open communication.

Michelle Low is a researcher with the Institute of Strategic Analysis and Policy Research (Insap).

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.

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