LETTER | At long last, the number of Covid-19 cases registered from Oct 18 to 20 were 5,434, 5,745 and 5,516 respectively.

In May, the average number was 5,279 per day and went up to 5,987 in June. It then shot up to 11,655 per day in July and rocketed to 20,418 in August.

Mercifully, the average number of daily cases dropped to 16,648 in September and 8,084 in the first 20 days of this month. The highest was on Oct 1 with 11,889 cases and the lowest on Oct 18 with 5,434.

By the end of this month, the total number of Covid-19 cases for the month is likely to surpass 200,000 and still higher than the 179,622 recorded in June, but it will be a huge drop compared to the 361,293 in July, 632,982 in August and 499,441 in September.

From Oct 18, nine states have moved to Phase 3 of the National Recovery Plan (NRP) while Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, Malacca and Pahang plus the Federal Territories of Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya and Labuan are under Phase 4 with the full opening of the economy and no travel restrictions.

But Malacca would be having a state election on Nov 20 for 28 state legislative assembly seats. There are a total of 495,196 registered voters compared to 1,103,646 in the September 2020 Sabah state election, which later resulted in a spike of Covid-19 cases nationwide.

In September 2020, the average number of daily Covid-19 cases in the country was only 63 per day and went up to 656 in October, 1,138 in November, 1,526 in December and 3,289 in January 2021.

Hopefully, the same pattern is not repeated from now until the end of the year.

On Jan 13 this year, the movement control order (MCO) had to be reimposed for five states and three federal territories. It was first implemented in March last year and was replaced by conditional MCO in May 2020 when daily cases averaged 60 per day.

The recovery MCO was then introduced in June when daily cases averaged 28 per day and dropped to only 11 daily in July and 12 daily in August. We must have done very well then without vaccination, which was only brought into the country in late February this year.

We also did relatively well in March when the average number of Covid-19 cases was 1,443 per day but lost our direction in the second half of April when politicians were overly eager to be popular by allowing Ramadan bazaars to operate in addition to night markets.

Even standard operating procedures (SOPs) were announced for visits during Hari Raya Aidilfitri in May but were cancelled just days before. Hopefully, the worst is behind us but it is worrying to see many people behaving as if there is no Covid-19.

We should not forget that the travel restrictions were lifted to save our economy as loss of livelihoods could also cause loss of lives, apart from untold misery from those who have lost businesses and jobs, or have their incomes greatly reduced and had depleted all their savings.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.