KUALA LUMPUR - The Malaysian government on Sunday (Feb 7) revised its Chinese New Year health protocols to allow up to 15 people to attend the reunion dinner, following a barrage of criticism from Chinese groups and politicians.
The National Unity Ministry revealed new standard operating procedures just days ahead of the festivities. The previous SOPs restricted reunion dinners to only members of the same household.
Malaysia is currently under movement controls that limit travel and large gatherings as it tackles rising coronavirus infections that have strained its healthcare system.
The new SOPs allow for a gathering of 15 individuals within a 10km radius for reunion dinners.
The Ministry also said in its statement that Chinese New Year prayers are now allowed at temples on Feb 11, 12 and 19, with a maximum of 30 individuals able to be present at any given time.
“Unity Ministry officials have been appointed as supervising officers under the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act 1988 and will monitor the compliance of the SOPs,” the ministry said.
Last Thursday, Senior Minister for Security Ismail Sabri Yaakob said reunion dinners were only allowed among “members of the same household” and that no visitations were allowed for Chinese New Year. Prayers at temples were forbidden, and only temple committee members could be on temple premises.
The rules, which coincided with the government saying it would reopen hair salons and night markets despite extending the nationwide Movement Control Order (MCO) for another two weeks, were roundly criticised.
Malaysians mocked the restrictions against house gathering while night markets were allowed to open. The Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) party weighed in on the criticism.
Malaysia has been under the MCO, which bars inter-district and interstate travel, since Jan 13, as the country battles a worsening third wave of the pandemic.
Unlike last year’s MCO, which was a near total lockdown, the country has allowed several sectors of the economy to stay open, such as the manufacturing, palm oil and construction sectors.
Malaysia’s highest daily coronavirus tally- 5,278 cases- was recorded on Jan 30. The country recorded 3,731 cases on Sunday with another 15 deaths. The country now has a total of 242,452 cases with 872 deaths. It currently has 51,241 active cases.
Malaysia is also under a state of emergency from January 11 until August 1 to battle the pandemic. Its first vaccines are due to arrive at the end of this month.
YANGON: Internet access was partially restored in Myanmar on Sunday (Feb 7), as a nationwide web and social media blockade failed to curb public outrage and massive protests against the military coup that ousted elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
"Partial restoration of Internet connectivity confirmed in #Myanmar from 2pm local time on multiple providers following information blackout," said Internet monitoring service Netblocks on Twitter.
Myanmar was plunged into cyber darkness on Saturday at the military's orders.
Netblocks said social media platforms remained off limits on Sunday afternoon.
But mobile phone customers using services with MPT, Ooredoo, Telenor and Mytel are now able to access mobile Internet data and Wi-Fi.
Earlier on Sunday Netblocks said connectivity in Myanmar was at 14 per cent of usual levels.
Protesters march during a demonstration against the military coup in Yangon on Feb 7, 2021. (Photo: AFP/Ye Aung Thu)
In a second day of widespread protests against the military junta, crowds in the biggest city, Yangon, sported red shirts, red flags and red balloons, the colour representing Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy Party (NLD). They chanted, “We don’t want military dictatorship! We want democracy!”
Sunday's gathering was much bigger than one on Saturday when tens of thousands took to the streets in the first mass protests against the coup and in spite of a blockade on the Internet ordered by the junta in the name of ensuring calm.
On Sunday, massive crowds from all corners of Yangon gathered in townships and headed toward the Sule Pagoda at the heart of downtown Yangon, also a rallying point during the Buddhist monk-led 2007 protests and others in 1988.
They gestured with the three-finger salute that has become a symbol of protest against the coup. Drivers honked their horns and passengers held up photos of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
"We don't want to live under military boots," said 29-year-old protester Ye Yint.
Protesters face off with police standing guard during a demonstration against the military coup in Yangon on Feb 7, 2021. (Photo: STR / AFP)
Despite the Internet shutdown, a few people were able to broadcast on Facebook Live. Users said Internet access appeared to have been restored on Sunday afternoon.
Telecom Myanmar said in a tweet at about 2.30pm local time (4pm, Singapore time) that its Internet services had been restored in the country.
There was no comment from the junta in the capital Naypyidaw, more than 350km north of Yangon.
An internal note for United Nations staff estimated that 1,000 people joined a protest in Naypyidaw while there were 60,000 in Yangon alone. Protests also were reported in the second city of Mandalay and many towns across the country of 53 million people.
GUNSHOTS
The demonstrations have largely been peaceful, unlike the bloody crackdowns seen in 1998 and 2007.
But shots were heard in the southeastern town of Myawaddy as uniformed police with guns charged a group of a couple of hundred protesters, live video showed. There was no immediate report of casualties.
"Anti-coup protests show every sign of gaining steam. On the one hand, given history, we can well expect the reaction to come," wrote author and historian Thant Myint-U on Twitter.
"On the other, Myanmar society today is entirely different from 1988 and even 2007. Anything's possible."
Police stand guard on a street during a demonstration against the military coup in Yangon on Feb 7, 2021. (Photo: STR / AFP)
With no Internet and official information scarce, rumours swirled about the fate of Aung San Suu Kyi and her Cabinet. A story that she had been released drew crowds out to celebrate on Saturday, but it was quickly quashed by her lawyer.
Aung San Suu Kyi, 75, faces charges of illegally importing six walkie-talkies and is being held in police detention for investigation until Feb 15. Her lawyer said he has not been allowed to see her.
She spent nearly 15 years under house arrest during decades of struggling to end almost half a century of army rule before the start of a troubled transition to democracy in 2011.
Army commander Min Aung Hlaing carried out the coup on the grounds of fraud in a Nov 8 election in which Suu Kyi's party won a landslide. The electoral commission dismissed the allegations of malpractice.
Protesters take part in a demonstration against the military coup in Yangon on Feb 7, 2021. (Photo: STR / AFP)
More than 160 people have been arrested since the military seized power, said Thomas Andrews, the United Nations special rapporteur on Myanmar.
"The generals are now attempting to paralyse the citizen movement of resistance - and keep the outside world in the dark - by cutting virtually all Internet access," Andrews said in a statement on Sunday.
"We must all stand with the people of Myanmar in their hour of danger and need. They deserve nothing less."
WUHAN (BLOOMBERG, REUTERS) - Scientists probing the origins of the coronavirus are wrapping up a lengthy investigation in China and have found important clues about a Wuhan seafood market's role in the outbreak.
Dr Peter Daszak, a New York-based zoologist assisting the World Health Organisation-sponsored mission, said he anticipates the main findings will be released before his planned Feb 10 departure.
Speaking from the central city of Wuhan, where Covid-19 mushroomed in December 2019, Dr Daszak said the 14-member group worked with experts in China and visited key hot spots and research centres to uncover "some real clues about what happened".
Investigators want to know how the Sars-CoV-2 virus - whose closest known relative came from bats 1,000 miles (1,609km) away - spread explosively in Wuhan before causing the worst contagion in more than a century.
Dr Daszak said the investigation heralds a turning point in pandemic mitigation.
"It's the beginning of hopefully a really deep understanding of what happened so we can stop the next one," he said over Zoom late last Friday (Feb 5).
"That's what this is all about - trying to understand why these things emerge so we don't continually have global economic crashes and horrific mortality while we wait for vaccines. It's just not a tenable future."
Worldwide, Covid-19 has caused more than 105.7 million infections and 2.3 million deaths.
The WHO was asked in May last year to help "identify the zoonotic source of the virus and the route of introduction to the human population, including the possible role of intermediate hosts".
Scientists visited the lab and asked Dr Shi Zhengli, who has collected and analysed these viruses for more than a decade, about the research and the earliest known coronavirus cases.
"We really have to cover the whole gamut of key lines of investigation," Dr Daszak said. "To be fair to our hosts here in China, they've been doing the same for the last few months. They've been working behind the scenes, digging up the information, looking at it and getting it ready."
The work has been collaborative, with Chinese counterparts helping mission investigators dig deeper for clues, he said.
"We sat down with them every single day and went through information, new data, and then said we want to go to the key places," the British scientist said. "They asked for a list. We suggested where we should go and the people we should meet. We went to every place on that list and they were really forthcoming with that."
Dr Daszak is one of 10 independent experts assisting the WHO mission. The agency also has five staff members participating, and the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Paris-based World Organisation for Animal Health have two each.
Cars carrying members of the World Health Organisation team leave Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, on Jan 31, 2021. PHOTO: REUTERS
Joining threads
Mission delegates worked in three groups that focused on the potential involvement of animals, the epidemiology or spread of the disease, and the findings from environmental sampling. Genetic sequencing data are helping investigators identify threads linking the information across patients and wildlife, Dr Daszak said.
"My feeling is we will be able to say something of some value at the end of this trip - quite a lot of value, but I don't want to get into what that's going to be or which way it points," he said, adding that the group's findings are confidential until they are released publicly.
The market sold mostly seafood, as well as meat that included freshly prepared wildlife. It was a focus early in the outbreak, when cases occurred among workers and shoppers, suggesting it might have been where the virus jumped from animals to humans.
Important clues
Subsequent research found earlier cases among people not linked to the market, undermining that theory. Investigators looked further and found important clues about the market's role, Dr Daszak said, declining to elaborate.
"Right now, we're trying to tease everything together," he said. "We've looked at these three strands separately. Now we're going to bring it together and see what everything tells us."
While the market was shuttered and cleaned almost immediately after cases were recognised, "it's still pretty intact", Dr Daszak said. "People left in a hurry and they left equipment, they left utensils, they left evidence of what was going on, and that's what we looked at."
Scientists in China who took environmental samples inside the market identified sites where traces of Sars-CoV-2 were detected, he said. Investigators also benefited from greater understanding of Covid-19.
"We know now what we didn't know then - that for every sick case, there were others that were asymptomatic or difficult to distinguish from a cold or cough," Dr Daszak said. "And so it's not unexpected that there would have been other cases other than ones that got into hospital. But how many others, when did this start? That's the sort of thing we're still working on."
Viruses are passed along "convoluted rivers of emergence" and tracing that journey is complicated and will take "a really long time", Dr Daszak said. "What I have seen already tells me that there are some real clues about what happened, and I hope that we'll be able to make a solid explanation of that by the end of this trip."
Meanwhile, another member of the team said he has been surprised by the complexity of getting to the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and that years of research lay ahead.
Said Dr Dominic Dwyer, a microbiologist and infectious diseases expert: "Everybody knows how it really exploded out of Huanan market in Wuhan, but the key is what was happening around that time and before."
A member (right) of the World Health Organisation team at a hotel in Wuhan, on Feb 6, 2021. PHOTO: REUTERS
Dr Dwyer, an Australian specialist in HIV/Aids who previously worked with the WHO during the Sars and avian flu outbreaks, said the conundrum of Covid-19 was that early asymptomatic carriers may not have known they had it.
"It would be naive to think that we're going to get virus zero," Dr Dwyer said. The early cases were identified in November, "but it's just the bit beforehand that's the very interesting part and the tricky part and the difficult part".
Dr Dwyer echoed Dr Daszak in his emphasis on the difficulty of understanding the disease. Dr Dwyer said more work needed to be done investigating how the virus could have been transmitted by animals, including bats, as well as into antibodies to coronavirus in people who did not show symptoms of the disease.
The short term was "reviewing what we know now and bringing all that data together and there are going to be a series of longer term projects, and this could take some years", Dr Dwyer said.
SINGAPORE - A staff member at the Singapore National Eye Centre (SNEC) has been mistakenly given the equivalent of five doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.
This occurred during a vaccination exercise on Jan 14, and was due to human error resulting from a lapse in communication among members of the vaccination team, said SNEC on Saturday (Feb 6). It said it has been following up closely with the staff member, who remains well.
SNEC said the worker in charge of diluting the vaccine had been called away to attend to other matters before it was done.
A second staff member had then mistaken the undiluted dose in the vial to be ready for administering.
The error was discovered within minutes after the vaccination.
“Senior doctors were alerted immediately and the staff (member) was assessed and found to be well, with no adverse reaction or side effects,” said SNEC.
The worker was warded at the Singapore General Hospital (SGH) for further observation, before being discharged two days later.
As a safety measure, the vaccination exercise at SNEC was stopped immediately upon detection of the error, and the rest of the staff were vaccinated at SGH.
The centre is not involved in the vaccination of other groups.
The SNEC has apologised to the affected staff member and the worker’s family, said Professor Wong Tien Yin, the medical director of the centre. “SNEC takes a very serious view of this incident. The safety of those receiving the vaccination during our staff vaccination exercise is of our utmost priority,” he added.
He said that the centre has done a thorough review of its internal processes, and taken steps to tighten them so that such lapses do not occur again.
SNEC told The Straits Times that the worker involved in administering the vaccine injection has been counselled.
On Saturday, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said it has worked with SNEC to identify the lapses which contributed to the error.
“Clinical trial data from Pfizer-BioNTech has indicated that receiving more than the recommended dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine is unlikely to be harmful,” said the ministry. It said it has not been notified of any similar incidents at other vaccination sites.
MOH also said there are robust medical protocols in place at all vaccination sites to ensure the safety of those vaccinated.
“These include protocols for vaccination processes on dose preparation, dilution and vaccine administration, including the need for clear indication to differentiate diluted and undiluted vaccine vials,” it said.
The ministry said it has since reminded vaccination providers to adhere strictly to the protocols, and will continue to work with them to ensure the utmost safety in the vaccination process.
Infectious diseases experts that The Straits Times spoke to also said the overdose is unlikely to be harmful. Some noted a similar case in Germany last year, where eight workers in an elderly home received a vaccine overdose but did not show any severe adverse effects.
It will also not cause the worker to get Covid-19, said Professor Ooi Eng Eong of the Duke-NUS Medical School.
Some experts also said the staff member would still require a second dose of the vaccine.
A system where at least two people check that the correct dose is being administered should be in place, said Dr Leong Hoe Nam from Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital.
Associate Professor Hsu Li Yang of the NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health said mistakes made during the vaccination drive are “inevitable in some way”, but cases of overdosing should be extremely rare now that the incident has been highlighted.
“Ultimately, however, errors are reduced by practice and familiarity with procedures,” said Professor Paul Tambyah, president of the Asia-Pacific Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infection.
He said the chances of error are likely to drop significantly once primary care providers such as general practitioners are tasked to do it, as they would be more experienced in administering vaccines.
As at last Tuesday, more than 175,000 people had received their first dose of the vaccine. About 6,000 people have also taken their second and final dose.
YANGON: Myanmar saw its largest anti-coup protests yet on Saturday (Feb 6) with young demonstrators spilling onto the streets to denounce the country's new military regime, despite a nationwide Internet blackout aimed at stifling a growing chorus of popular dissent.
The shutdown did not stop thousands of demonstrators from gathering across Myanmar's largest city Yangon, beginning on a road near Yangon University where many flashed the three-finger salute that has come to symbolise resistance to the army takeover.
"Down with the military dictatorship!" crowds yelled, many donning red headbands - the colour associated with Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party.
A large riot police contingent blocked nearby roads, with two water cannon trucks parked at the scene.
At least two other groups of demonstrators marched south to downtown Yangon's Sule Pagoda, carrying posters of Aung San Suu Kyi and president Win Myint to call for their release.
The protests ended by dusk, and demonstrators have vowed to return to the streets Sunday.
Further north in Mandalay, as many as 2,000 people were also protesting, AFP reporters on the ground said.
All were out to condemn dawn raids that brought a sudden halt to the country's 10-year experiment with democracy on Monday, just as lawmakers elected in national polls last November were due to sit in parliament for the first time.
"They don't respect our people's votes and I think they are betraying the country," one protester told AFP. "Our revolution starts today."
Here are some images from the day's protests:
Protesters take part in a demonstration against the Myanmar military coup in Yangon on Saturday, Feb 6, 2021. (Photo: AFP/Ye Aung Thu)
Riot police block a street as protesters gather for a demonstration against the Myanmar military coup in Yangon on Saturday, Feb 6, 2021. (Photo: AFP/Ye Aung Thu)
Protesters take part in a demonstration against the Myanmar military coup in Yangon on Saturday, Feb 6, 2021. (Photo: AFP/STR)
A protester holds up a sign and the three-finger salute during a demonstration against the Myanmar military coup in Yangon on Saturday, Feb 6, 2021. (Photo: AFP/STR)
Protesters wearing Food Panda delivery uniforms holding up the three-finger salute as they walk with their bicycles during a demonstration against the Myanmar military coup in Yangon on Saturday, Feb 6, 2021. (Photo: AFP/Ye Aung Thu)
Lawyers who graduated from the Yadanabon University flash the three-fingered salute of protest on Saturday, Feb 6, 2021 in Mandalay, Myanmar. (Photo: AP)
Lawyers who graduated from the Yadanabon University flash the three-fingered salute of protest in Mandalay, Myanmar, on Saturday, Feb 6, 2021. A banner reads "We condemn the unlawful coup. No to dictatorship". (Photo: AP)
Riot police rest at a bus stop as protesters take part in a demonstration against the Myanmar military coup in Yangon on Saturday, Feb 6, 2021. (Photo: AFP/STR)
A protester holds up the three-finger salute as police block a street during a demonstration against the Myanmar military coup in Yangon on Saturday, Feb 6, 2021. (Photo: AFP/Ye Aung Thu)
A protester gives bouquets of flowers to a line of riot police during a demonstration against the Myanmar military coup in Yangon on Saturday, Feb 6, 2021. (Photo: AFP/STR)
A policeman stands with bouquets of flowers given to them by protesters taking part in a demonstration against the Myanmar military coup in Yangon on Saturday, Feb 6, 2021. (Photo: AFP/STR)
Protesters block a police vehicle as they take part in a demonstration against the Myanmar military coup in Yangon on Saturday, Feb 6, 2021. (Photo: AFP/STR)
Protesters take part in a demonstration against the Myanmar military coup in Yangon on Saturday, Feb 6, 2021. (Photo: AFP/STR)
Protesters take part in a demonstration against the Myanmar military coup in Yangon on Saturday, Feb 6, 2021. (Photo: AFP/Ye Aung Thu)
Trucks carrying police make their way past protesters holding a demonstration against the Myanmar military coup in Yangon on Saturday, Feb 6, 2021. (Photo: AFP/Ye Aung Thu)
Protesters take part in a demonstration against the Myanmar military coup in Yangon on Saturday, Feb 6, 2021. (Photo: AFP/STR)
