Making a move with critical preparedness, readiness and response actions is the only way to deal with pandemic diseases.
Yesterday, the Ministry of Health of Cambodia announced that there were 21 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 in one day- making the total number of confirmed cases to 33. Most of the cases are imported cases. The latest cases are mostly linked to the religious gathering at mosque in Sri Petaling, Kuala Lumpur.
It needs to be cautious that although the community transmission has not yet serious in the country, according to what we have known, there is an increasing risk of having a spike of the number of infections in coming days or weeks. When the community transmission starts, it is more difficult to control and manage.
Since early this week, the Cambodian government has taken some concrete steps to contain and mitigate Covid-19 pandemic in the country such as forming an inter-ministerial committee to specifically deal with the disease and imposing travel restrictions and quarantine policy.
Other measures include closing the schools, suspending religious gathering and the operations of KTV and cinema, and boosting public awareness campaign on social distancing and maintaining personal and community hygiene.
The risk of not taking action is really high. A whole-of-government approach is required. The countries that move fast and take bold decisions tend to be more effective in containing and mitigating the pandemics.
Sreytouch Vong wrote in the Policy Brief of the Asian Vision Institute (AVI) that, “addressing the Covid-19 crisis requires cooperation at the global, regional and country levels. At the country level, cross-sectoral collaborations-where relevant stakeholders’ roles and scope of their contributions to the prevention and control of the virus outbreak are clearly determined- are necessary”.
Full article available: https://www.akp.gov.kh/post/detail/28105
