There will be a 4pm announcement on the MCO today.
I hope the government is making its decision based on good data, science and public health, and not purely for commercial considerations. Political considerations, in particular should take a back seat.
We have seen countries that were ahead of the curve such as Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong are now reversing back to more severe forms of lockdowns. These countries are nervous about an impending new wave. The important thing to realise that these countries which are supposedly ahead of the curve, have done efficient and mass testing.
We, on the other hand are still struggling to do mass testing. We are suppose to be able to do 11,000 tests per day. But I have heard there is a backlog of between 2 to 7 days on lab test results. So data is patchy in terms of timing. Equally worrying is that out of the 11,000 tests, we are only testing about 3,000 to 4,000 new cases per day. The balance of tests are for existing patients. Throw in the returnees that have to self quarantine, we have another wave of unknowns.
That being the case, it is a fact that data is insufficient to support an accurate predictive model. Whatever announcement the government will make at 4 pm, it needs to address the issue of data and transparency of the data.