Covid-19 which struck Malaysia about a year ago (Feb 2020), began with hardly a handful of people. The virus unfortunately quickly spread, and citizens began seeing over 200 positive cases on the daily. 

Safety precaution measures came in to place, the first Movement Control Order (MCO) played its respective part, and the country successfully brought down the daily numbers, all the way to single digits in July. 

However, a third-wave storm was a brewing in September of 2020, and by October cases were reaching, what we then thought to be an all-time high of over 1,000 positives. Little did we know that, that wasn’t it, because the country then eventually reached up to over 5,000 cases. 

After almost three months of high numbers, the government then went ahead to introduce MCO 2.0 on January 13th 2021, as a means to set all things right again.

As citizens and supposedly higher-ups have since stayed safe and stayed home, last night a ruling was passed by the Minister of Health, Dr Adham Baba. According to the ruling, fellow cabinet ministers who venture abroad for official purposes, would no longer need to self-quarantine upon returning to Malaysia. 

As a matter of fact, the initial quarantine duration of 10 days dropped to only 3 days, before they’re allowed to go back out into the world again. 

Named "Pencegahan dan Pengawalan Penyakit Berjangkit (Pengecualian) 2021" and reported to come into effect today (Feb 9), the ruling specifically stated that, “The Health Minister (Dr Adham Baba) hereby grants exception to ministers returning from official meetings abroad under the Act of the Constitution, Section 15”. 

The ruling was installed based on Act 342 of the Constitution, “Pencegahan dan Pengawalan Penyakit Berjangkit 1988”.

With it, cabinet members wouldn’t need to abide by Standard Operation Procedures (SOP), which requires everyone to quarantine for a bare minimum of 10 days, upon returning home from other countries. 

Since then, netizens have been far from happy, and have expressed their emotions in oh so many words. 

Twitter folk have even gone the extra mile and created a specialized hashtag, #AdhamBabaLetakJawatan which basically translates to ‘please resign Adham Baba’. 

With cases being at 3,100 yesterday (Feb 8), which is by the by what Malaysians would classify as a good day these days, only time will tell if this ruling does something for the country, or be the very thing that undoes us all.