The Malaysian Insight

MALAYSIA is looking at implementing fast circuit breakers in order to contain Covid-19 infections and break the chain of infections, Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said today.

“What we want to avoid is total national lockdown or statewide lockdown but we must have in place a fast circuit breaker system for us to stop the transmission,” he told the Dewan Rakyat.

Khairy was responding to questions from Oscar Ling Chai Yew (Sibu-PH) regarding the ministry’s effort to bring down the number of Covid-19 infections in Sarawak.

Given that Malaysia is undergoing a pre-endemic transition, Khairy said a circuit breaker would help in places where infections are “out of control”.

“We have to think about implementing circuit breakers that are fast and effective to break the chain of transmission. This is something that we are still discussing and could still be an option for us.”

Since the start of the pandemic, Malaysia has implemented three nationwide lockdowns. The first in March 2020, followed by the second one in January 2021 and the third lockdown in June.

The Rembau MP said that a National Testing Policy is also in the works in response to a question from Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad (Kuala Selangor-PH).

“We are readying a National Testing Strategy so that it is clear at which stage we can assume that an area can move to the mitigation stage and under what conditions is it still in late containment stage – where we will continue testing those who are symptomatic and non-symptomatic,” he said.

A lack of testing policy is why there are various interpretations to testing on the ground, he said.

With regard to under-reporting of Covid-19 self-test kit results, Khairy said that this was a serious matter.

“We find that those who report the results of their self-test kits, they have a tendency to do so when they are positive; negative cases many don’t report. That is why there is a problem with our denominator.”

Currently, after adding the number of PCR tests, RTK-Antigen tests and RTK-Antigen self-test kits, the positivity rate stands at 9.95%, Khairy said.

This is almost twice the 5% positivity rate set by the World Health Organization.

“But we don’t know the true denominator. We don’t know how many people have done the self-test.”

In response to Dr Kelvin Yii’s (Bandar Kuching-PH) suggestion to provide rebates to those who report their self-test results, Khairy said this is something that the ministry may look into.

“The idea is to provide rebates to those who report their tests, that’s perhaps the only way we can encourage reporting.” – September 23, 2021.