Lawmaker calls for some Covid-19 measures to be dropped so ‘normal life’ can resume
Lawmaker Lam Lon Wai has expressed his disagreement with some of the measures in force that aim to prevent and control Covid-19.
During the period before the agenda of Monday’s plenary session at the Legislative Assembly, the lawmaker opined that local authorities are being sluggish in adapting preventive measures to the practical situation of the region and are insisting on ineffective measures that cause inconvenience and complications to the lives of residents.
“Authorities should learn from past experience and, together with the latest information on the epidemic from the rest of the world and the mainland, update the current preventive measures and guidelines and disseminate them to the public. [This would] minimize the impacts on residents and, at the same time, prepare for potential [new] outbreaks,” he said.
“A few days ago, a subordinate department of the National Health Commission asked the whole country to accelerate epidemiological investigations with greater precision, and not to simplify prevention and control, aiming to reduce the impact on the population,” he added.
Lam also noted that, while following the national policies, Macau should learn that “harsher prevention work does not mean better,” calling for a reduction in the formalism of some measures and the cancelation or adjustment of “measures that are no longer effective.”
Among these, he noted the case of the implementation and handling of the health code and the location QR code, which is said to have become “a mere formality” with questionable results that cause great inconvenience to residents.
The lawmaker highlighted that the government has used, when necessary, a lot of public space for the installation of outdoor nucleic acid stations (NAT) that no longer make any sense and are restricting access to public facilities such as parks and gardens.
He called on the government to make “reasonable adjustments” like finding suitable indoor facilities to serve those that still need the tests and replacing most of the unnecessary requirements such as needing a NAT to participate in local events with the need to take a rapid antigen test instead.
