A view of people jogging at the Titiwangsa lake park in Kuala Lumpur. WHO’s Dr Adeeba Kamarulzaman called on the government to allow members of the public to participate in outdoor sports. — Picture by Shafwan Zaidon
A view of people jogging at the Titiwangsa lake park in Kuala Lumpur. WHO’s Dr Adeeba Kamarulzaman called on the government to allow members of the public to participate in outdoor sports. — Picture by Shafwan Zaidon

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KUALA LUMPUR, May 7 — Deputy Youth and Sports Minister Wan Ahmad Fayhsal Wan Ahmad Kamal defended the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government's decision to bar outdoor exercise for areas under the third movement control order (MCO).

“Evaluation has been made by @KKMPutrajaya and @MKNJPM. As sports enthusiasts of course we are saddened by this restriction but I’m pretty sure KKM and MKN have deployed all necessary scientific tools and dataset before arriving at this decision. Hopefully things will get better,” he tweeted referring the acronyms to the Ministry of Health (MoH) and the National Security Council (NSC),” he tweeted.

Wan Ahmad was responding to a Twitter user who criticised the decision, and called on the government to “follow the science”.

“Come on, YB. Follow the science. Negligible risk of Covid transmission for outdoor individual exercise. It's been 17 months since the start of the pandemic, we know what's safe and what's not,” Harris Zainul tweeted.

 

One of the nation's foremost infectious diseases experts and member of the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Science Council, Dr Adeeba Kamarulzaman also called on the government to allow members of the public to participate in outdoor sports.

“The risk of getting Covid-19 outdoors is about 18 times lower than indoors. Please let the rakyat continue to jog, cycle, play football or any other outdoor sports for the sake of our physical and mental health,” she said.

 

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from Malay Mail - Malaysia