Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin on Thursday (4 November 2021) said that the Federal Government is planning to do away with the National Recovery Plan (NRP) and use a new ‘traffic-light’ based system as indicators for lifting the movement restrictions due to Covid-19. This is after all of the states in Malaysia except for Sarawak and Kelantan are now in Phase 4 of the NRP.
As reported by Code Blue, Khairy confirmed that Malaysia will almost certainly migrate to a new framework for Covid-19 management, although details of it are yet to be finalised. Previously in a Health, Science and Innovation Special Select Parliament Committee meeting on 28 September 2021, the Health Minister asserted,
“Eventually, we will move away from these phases to a new system of reporting. Now, we want to make sure that most of the states will go into Phases Three and Four. But the NRP will migrate to a new way of categorising where we are after this,”
Minister of Health, Khairy Jamaluddin.
During the meeting, the Select Committee’s chairman, Bandar Kuching Member of Parliament Dr Kelvin Yii Lee Wuen asked whether this new framework would be something similar to a traffic light system and Khairy concurred that it would be ‘something like that’.
Khairy further elaborated that the NRP is one-way and it can’t regress. So a new system is being discussed so that consideration would be placed should Covid-19 cases suddenly rise.
Currently, a traffic light system is being implemented in New Zealand whereby the system eliminates all lockdowns and generally allows way more freedom than the NRP. Basically, regions would be categorised based on the colours of the traffic light, with red being the most restrictions, yellow intermediate and green will almost be restriction-free.
What do you guys think of the potential move? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.
Also read: Sabah Enters Phase 4 of NRP Starting 8 November
