Dr Adeeba Backs Mahathir S Call For Independent Council To Tackle Covid 19

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Infectious diseases expert Dr Adeeba Kamarulzaman has supported Dr Mahathir Mohamad's proposal for an independent council to oversee the country's Covid-19 response.
This, she said, was needed as currently, several ministries appeared to be working in silos.
"To establish a specific body is a good suggestion. What we can see is that we are working in silos, the Health Ministry, International Trade and Industry Ministry and so on.
"We need a team that just focuses on Covid-19 as proposed by Tun (Mahathir)," she said today.
She was speaking in a webinar titled "Reset Malaysia: Problems and Solutions". Mahathir was also a panellist for this forum.
Earlier, the former prime minister had repeated his calls for an apolitical council to be formed to manage the Covid-19 response.
Previously, Mahathir had made a similar suggestion for the entire country to be managed by a revived National Operations Council (NOC).
Adeeba said she supported the idea in hopes of helping the government tackle the Covid-19 pandemic, which has not shown signs that it will get better.
Asked what the government can do better, the World Health Organization Science Council member said there needs to be improved contact tracing.
"When you want to break the chain (of infections) we have to find as many people who have been infected and isolate them. There is no other way," she said.
She added that there was an urgent need to address the shortage of available hospital beds.

However, Adeeba said Malaysia was not the only country in the region experiencing a rise in Covid-19 cases and said Thailand and Taiwan were also struggling despite their previous successes in containing the pandemic. - Mkini

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