Contact tracing in Klang Valley futile, focus on accelerating vaccination - MP
With Covid-19 cases in the Klang Valley seemingly beyond control, one lawmaker has suggested that the government redirect resources to ramp up vaccination rates instead.
Asked whether the government should use resources to either maintain a high level of testing or focus on vaccination, Bandar Kuching MP Dr Kelvin Yii said it was a tough choice, but that the former may be futile.
“I think at the current rate...
With Covid-19 cases in the Klang Valley seemingly beyond control, one lawmaker has suggested that the government redirect resources to ramp up vaccination rates instead.
Asked whether the government should use resources to either maintain a high level of testing or focus on vaccination, Bandar Kuching MP Dr Kelvin Yii said it was a tough choice, but that the former may be futile.
“I think at the current rate, normal testing and contact tracing may be futile in the Klang Valley due to high numbers.
“The assumption should be that it is in the community and probably almost everyone is exposed,” he told Malaysiakini.
Epidemiologist Dr Lokman Hakim Sulaiman shared similar views with health news portal CodeBlue recently, saying that the find, test, trace, isolate and support (FTTIS) system no longer applied to the Klang Valley.
“We assume the majority of people have been exposed,” Lokman had said.
The Klang Valley has been besieged by increasingly high numbers of Covid-19 cases over the past two weeks, with Selangor reporting more than 6,000 cases yesterday.
Lokman believed that daily Covid-19 cases nationwide could be as high as 35,000 - significantly more than official figures released by the Health Ministry.
Deputy Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob last Saturday said the high figures were due to large-scale screening - which some critics said proved a point that the country was not carrying out enough tests previously.
Yii said with the numbers as they are now, the majority of resources should be put into accelerating vaccination rates.
“Make sure all high-risk groups - elderly, comorbidities - are vaccinated,” he said, adding that there should be special vaccination centres (PPVs) for high-risk groups to do walk-in vaccination.
The government is kicking off a pilot programme for walk-in vaccination for those above 60 in the Klang Valley, but the timeline for when this starts is unclear.
There is strong evidence that with vaccination, even if a person becomes infected with Covid-19, the risk of them developing serious symptoms is much lower.
Meanwhile, Yii said the government also needs to come up with a comprehensive home quarantine SOP for patients who are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms.
“(We also need to) revamp the current Covid-19 Assessment Centres (CAC), implement video assessment, and convert current CAC buildings into field hospitals for Category 3 (more serious symptoms) patients,” he added.
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