2021 - a Vaccination Year

 

It's already more than a year since the outbreak of COVID-19,  and most of the countries have already started the vaccination phase on front liner and the senior citizens. Have things started to get better?

Ever since the outbreak last year, we have been hoping things can get better in 2021. At one point there was some hope in Malaysia as they achieved zero new case for a day, it seems like for us who are working overseas maybe have a chance to go back home in early 2021 to celebrate Chinese New Year. However, due to the Sabah election, lack of public awareness, the soften SOP, it got worse. The cases spike up, from hundreds of cases to thousands of cases each day, and even reach over 5000 thousand cases for a day. All hope is lost as there are still so many community cases in Malaysia, so for the first time I couldn't get back home to celebrate Chinese New Year with my parents. Well, even in Malaysia everyone couldn't cross state during that time and home visiting were limited as well. 2021 Chinese New Year in Malaysia was a quiet one, but we were still patient and hopeful for the second half of the year.

Malaysia's highest new case record

It's almost mid year of 2021, most of the countries already started the vaccination stage to their citizens. For example Singapore, at this point they already started vaccination to the citizens of age 40 and above. In Malaysia, even though the progress is still lack behind, they already started vaccination to the senior citizens like my grandmother. It may seems like things will get better soon, and we may have a chance to go back home at the second half of 2021. But no, it went to the opposite way.

Even in Singapore where people still follow the SOP, practice social distancing as much as possible, recently there is a spread of community cases too. It's not a lot, at most 10 local case per day, but it's enough to alert the Singapore government to take action ASAP. Currently we are back to phase 2 and if the situation is not controlled there might be a chance to go circuit breaker 2.0. 

The worst as of now is India. The cases there for each day is around 300k to 400k, death cases are thousands as well. Furthermore these are official figure, there might be still a lot of more unofficial cases. Due to such spike in cases, there is a shortage of medication like oxygen supply, shortage of beds in hospital and so on, which make things even worse. 

I hope Malaysia won't reach until such critical stage, but it may if the citizens still don't follow the SOP, don't practice social distancing. Near end February, the situation seems to be lighten as the cases were dropping to 1000+ cases each day. However due to the soften SOP, the Ramadan Bazaar, the cases went back up again.😓 At this point, the number of new cases each day is over 4000 and even our Director General of Health, Dato Seri Dr. Noor Hisham had warn the citizens if they still don't follow the SOP, still being stubborn, in end May the number of new cases will hit over 5000 each day. Our front liner have worked day and night over the last one year trying to press the figure down, but because of the stubbornness of the citizens, the lack of urgency of the government, the figure is not going down anytime soon.

source: straitstimes

At the start of 2021, I really do hope we are able to go back Malaysia at the second half of the year since the vaccination already started. But now due to the rise of cases everywhere, I'm not sure is it still achievable now. I wanted to stay positive, but I don't really see a hope as of now. It's been over a year now, I haven't see my parents in person. We have a family video call at least once per week to check on each other, to assure we are doing fine. I'm sure both my mom and dad also miss us a lot, want to see us soon. If things not getting any better soon, I do have the urge to just heck care, go back quarantine for 2 weeks and back home see my parents. I hope I won't go to such stage.