KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia needs six to 12 weeks of a circuit breaker to recover its health services that are being stretched with a four-digit streak of Covid-19 cases over the past month.
The period is also needed to see a sustained decline in infections and contain the spread before the general public is vaccinated.
The Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry's Covid-19 Epidemiological Analysis and Strategies Task Force chairman, Datuk Dr Awang Bulgiba Awang Mahmud, said with 25,140 active cases (up to Friday) and climbing, it was only a matter of days before the 28,674 beds for Covid-19 cases in public facilities were taken up.
"We are already at breaking point now and new cases continue to be in the thousands. It's impossible to continue current containment strategies with such a high number of cases if we don't have enough healthcare workers or beds to deal with the surge."
He also said the streak would overwhelm the testing capacity and public healthcare workers in charge of contact tracing.
"The country will then be forced to switch from containment to mitigation and we may need another MCO (Movement Control Order). This time, it needs to be a full-fledged MCO, not CMCO (Conditional Movement Control Order) and it needs to be long enough to drastically reduce the contact rate between people."
Dr Awang said the same strict conditions needed to be adopted as in the first phase of MCO, but this time the containment could be confined to certain states, such as Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, Johor and Negri Sembilan, where the 14-day rates of cases per capita (population) exceeded 100 per 100,000 people.
These states had a more aggressive increase than states like Perlis and Sarawak, and they also had a high proportion of unlinked cases, an indicator of widespread community transmissions.
He said the fact that infections had taken root among the migrant population also weighed down tracing and testing.
He said a second MCO was a bitter pill to swallow, but the increasing number of deaths was distressing.
He said while some might argue that Malaysia's death tally was lower than Western countries, the number of intensive care unit (ICU) beds occupied by Covid-19 patients was a harbinger.
"As we don't have granular data on Covid-19 patients, I cannot predict exactly when these beds would be filled up, but it is only a matter of time, unless drastic action is taken.
"When ICU beds are filled up, open wards will need to be converted to ICU wards. This will put all patients and healthcare workers at risk."
The Universiti Malaya professor also said more data and analysis of cases were needed and he urged the Health Ministry to share crucial information with experts who had offered help to analyse data to address the situation more effectively.
Former deputy health minister Dr Lee Boon Chye, meanwhile, called the government to appoint 10,000 special recruits for contact tracing as soon as possible rather than opting for another MCO.
"A widespread MCO can be avoided by instituting the Targeted Enhanced MCO in affected areas by mass screening and testing and isolating those with contact for 48 hours."
Dr Lee said this could be achieved through an immediate set-up of a national network of contact tracers that would be bolstered by the additional recruits.
He added that the recruits could be trained by public health officers to ensure contacts adhere to quarantine and follow the standard operating procedures (SOP).
He said they could also help in mass testing and other tasks.
Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin was expected to announce tighter SOP and possibly reinstating the MCO tomorrow.
On Thursday, the Health Ministry warned that daily Covid-19 cases could hit 8,000 by mid-March if the basic reproduction number (R-nought, or R0) of the virus infection increased to 1.2.
Malaysia , on Thursday, recorded 3,027 new cases, a record-high in daily infections, just a day after logging 2,525 cases.
The Malaysian Medical Association also expressed concern over the mental health of frontliners and healthcare workers in Covid-19 wards as cases continue to climb.
Its president, Professor Datuk Dr Subramaniam Muniandy, said many of them were experiencing fatigue and high levels of stress, and urged the Health Ministry to look into steps to increase manpower to relieve those who were overworked and suffering from burnout.
"These concerns must be addressed with urgency as these issues may affect the standard of care," he said.