COMMENT | The only reason to resort to a movement control order (MCO) is to buy time to protect the healthcare facilities, flatten the pandemic curve and allow a breather to our overstretched and exhausted healthcare workers.

All of the signatories in the open letter to the Prime Minister, and many more who reverted late to the call, will only agree to the MCO as a short circuit to rapidly dampen the spiraling numbers of Covid-19 cases, so as to prevent the healthcare services from being overwhelmed.

From the Health Ministry (MOH) data available in the public domain, it suggests to us that our health facilities are not at its breaking point.

The ventilator utilisation in our Covid-19 is only 3.4 percent.

The intensive care beds utilisation is only 14.0 percent.

It is only the general bed utilisation which is now breaching 100 percent capacity.

The third hospital bed census is easily and immediately remediable. In fact, the experts from academia, military and others outside the MOH have suggested this action way back in October 2020.

They recommended to the MOH that for stage 1 and 2 Covid-19 cases, the symptomatic and mild cases, which make up the bulk of the cases (70-80 percent) should be isolated at home.