By Wan Nurul Atiqah
KUALA LUMPUR, 7 January 2022: Malaysia has decided to take ‘proportionate’ action rather than the ‘extremes’ as elsewhere, Minister of Health, Khairy Jamaluddin said recently.
Khairy said that his Ministry would continue to respond in a calibrated and appropriate manner, and not resort to extremes such as implementing a total lockdown.
Ministry of Health (MoH) reported 45 new Omicron cases imported from abroad on Christmas Day last year. This included 30 Muslim travellers who returned from Saudi Arabia after performing their umrah.
This led the MoH to temporarily suspend travel permission to prospective pilgrims beginning 8 January to curb the spread of Omicron following concerns over the spread of the variant due to non-compliance by Muslim pilgrims with quarantine procedures upon their return.
Khairy said he is discussing the options for affected pilgrims on whether to offer a refund or reschedule the umrah travel programmes with the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, the Umrah and Haj Travel Agencies’ Association.
Khairy also shared two articles from the British daily The Guardian on his Instagram stories which related to the latest number of people infected with COVID-19 in the United States, and the report on over a million cases in New Delhi that led the Indian government to implement a weekend curfew to combat the spread of the Omicron variant.
The second article detailed how the city of Xi’an in China put its 1.2 million citizens under lockdown after three asymptomatic COVID-19 cases were detected there, joining 13 million other Chinese citizens who are currently in lockdown.
Khairy stated in his stories accompanying the posts, “Omicron (is) wreaking havoc in other countries. Million daily cases in the US. Curfew in Delhi.”
“Meanwhile, China locks down 1.2 million people because of three asymptomatic cases. Extremes all around. KKM (Ministry of Health) will continue to respond in a calibrated and proportionate manner,” he added.
Despite attacks against him and his ministry on the recent travel restrictions, he said he would continue to do his best to slow down the impending Omicron wave.***
Source: Malay Mail