MALAYSIA TO LOCK DOWN BEFORE MUSLIM HOLIDAY
Prime minister says move necessary to stave off national crisis in the form of a third wave as daily new cases reach 4,000 and continue to climb
Malaysia said yesterday it will impose a nearly month-long nationwide partial lockdown starting tomorrow as new Covid-19 cases continue to rise ahead of this week’s celebration of the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said with daily new cases now almost reaching 4,000 and with 37,396 active cases, the situation was on the verge of a third wave of the pandemic that could evolve into a national crisis.
Health officials earlier said 3,807 cases were recorded in the past 24 hours, with the highest number of cases occurring in the wealthy state of Selangor, followed by the commercial hub Kuala Lumpur. Johor and Penang, the two other major cities in Peninsular Malaysia, are also seeing a surge in cases.
The partial lockdown, known as a Movement Control Order (MCO), would begin tomorrow and end on June 7, Muhyiddin said. The decision follows restrictions imposed on Kuala Lumpur on May 5. Under an MCO, social activities including dining out are banned and interstate travel is forbidden except for medical or other approved reasons.
Malaysia began a vaccination drive in February with the PfizerBioNTech and Sinovac shots. Last week, it launched a parallel programme for those who volunteered to receive the AstraZeneca vaccine amid fears over its safety.
It also has detected its first case of a highly infectious coronavirus variant first identified in India.
It has banned flights to and from India and prohibited travellers from any Indian destination from entering the country.
Meanwhile, Singapore began a mass testing exercise yesterday involving 9,000 workers at Changi Airport and closed off a section of Terminal 3, shoring up its defences against an increase in unlinked Covid-19 cases, including some showing the B 1.617 variant first discovered in India.
Singapore, which last week imposed more restrictions on arrivals of foreign workers and local gatherings, reported 13 untraceable virus cases in the week ending on Sunday, compared to 10 the week before.
A continued rise in such cases could delay the launch of the Hong Kong-Singapore travel bubble, scheduled to begin on May 26 provided the seven-day rolling average of daily unlinked local cases is less than five in both cities.
The figure in Hong Kong is currently 0.14 and 1.86 in Singapore as of Sunday. The city state reported three new locally transmitted infections yesterday afternoon. This brings May’s total to 65, compared to 55 cases logged in April and just nine in March. There have been more than 61,000 cases in Singapore since the start of the pandemic.
The health ministry added that four of the new cases on Sunday had tested preliminary positive for the B. 1.617 variant, which is thought to be more transmissible, and two were staff at the airport.
In addition to the mass testing of airport staff, authorities have asked visitors to the public areas of the airport’s Terminal 3 to be swabbed. Authorities will also test 4,000 port workers at Pasir Panjang Terminal, while planning to test some 12,000 hospital staff.
For now, Singapore residents are not allowed to gather in groups of more than five. More workers have been told to work from home, and some facilities such as gyms and fitness studios have been told to suspend operations or specific classes. These restrictions will last until the end of the month.
Further north in the region, a Vietnamese woman died from Covid-19 in Laos on Sunday, according to state-run media, marking the country’s first death from the disease.
Reclusive, landlocked Laos had appeared to escape the brunt of the pandemic in 2020, but a community outbreak uncovered last month has sent the number of cases soaring – from 49 in early April to 1,302 in less than a month.
Authorities confirmed on Sunday that a 53-year-old Vietnamese woman had died from Covid-19, according to the state-run news outlet Vientiane Times.
The woman worked at a karaoke club in the capital Vientiane and had underlying health issues – such as diabetes – which meant her condition deteriorated very quickly, the report said.
The community outbreak in mid-April was traced to a Laotian national who came into contact with Thais, as well as to workers returning from Thailand, which is undergoing a third wave.
Vientiane promptly went into a snap lockdown, barring residents from leaving their homes.
Impoverished Laos is one of the most underdeveloped nations in Southeast Asia, and experts said its low official Covid-19 toll in 2020 was probably due to a dearth of testing.