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PUTRAJAYA: Malaysia’s “prevention and control” approach to managing Covid-19 has proven better than building herd immunity, says Tan Sri Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah.
The director general of Health said that the last 10 months have shown that the country’s decision was justified.
“There were two schools of thought at the beginning of the pandemic, and at the time we didn’t know if what we were doing was right or wrong.
“The herd immunity approach was recommended by many public health experts.
“It means that the more infected, the more people will get antibodies, especially the young, and that will provide herd immunity.
But vulnerable communities like the elderly will be at risk.
“But in Malaysia, we take the prevention and control approach, which means we work to prevent people from becoming infected with the virus.
“We didn’t know who was right at the time, but the last 10 months showed that countries that used the same approach as us were better able to contain their cases, compared to those that embraced herd immunity,” said Dr. Noor Hisham in the ministry. Covid-19 press conference here.
He added that many nations have seen Malaysia’s handling of the pandemic and are even using the country as a benchmark.
“None of us, whether in the public or private sector, have experience handling a pandemic.
“There is no benchmark in managing a pandemic, although many countries want to learn from us, especially about how we handle the second wave.
“This shows that we are creating the benchmark and we hope that the actions we have taken can be a role model for other countries,” said Dr. Noor Hisham.
On Malaysia’s decision to implement the Conditional Movement Control Order (MCO) in the Klang Valley, Dr. Noor Hisham said it was good for the country to act before cases spiked.
“We took preventative measures and imposed the conditional MCO before the districts became ‘red zones.’ If we didn’t, the scenario here would be worse than in Sabah.
“We acted early because we saw the population density in the states here and that distribution of cases was generalized,” he said.
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