He added that one result of this is having frontliners call people manually as part of the health ministry’s contact tracing efforts.
“The MySejahtera app can be used to inform the affected people when it comes to contact tracing.
“As long as the health ministry does not use digitalisation, we will always be playing catch-up with the virus,” he added.
He was speaking at a forum called “Pandemic and Vaccination, is there a need for emergency?”
According to Dzulkefly, Putrajaya should have been proactive by using big data and artificial intelligence to predict future cases.
He recalled how the Selangor government had asked the federal government last year to identify the exact areas where the outbreaks were taking place.
“But they said it may cause alarm, stigmatising the area. But under HIDE that is what they are finally doing,” he said, referring to the Hotspots Identification for Dynamic Engagement which was announced by Putrajaya yesterday.
However, Dzulkefly said HIDE should be able to go to the smallest geographical unit to target hotspots as locking down districts may still not be good enough.
Yesterday, Putrajaya announced six districts in Selangor will be placed under the full movement control order (MCO) from May 6 to 17. They are Hulu Langat, Petaling, Gombak, Klang, Kuala Langat and Sepang.
The remaining three districts, Kuala Selangor, Sabak Bernam and Ulu Selangor, will remain under conditional CMCO.
He said another MCO shows the government’s failure in managing the pandemic.
“SOPs are tactics to win against Covid-19 but to win a bigger war we need to ramp up big data, contact tracing and isolation of positive cases.
“We need to go beyond hammering the rakyat to comply with SOPs,” he added.
Dzulkefly also said the emergency has become a hindrance to control Covid-19 as there is an issue on lack of information and transparency from the federal level to states.
He also questioned why Kuala Lumpur, which has 225 cases for every 100,000 people, was not placed under MCO, comparing it with Selangor, which has 159 cases for every 100,000 people.
“KL is sandwiched right in the middle and we need to take measures according to science and evidence,” he said.
Another panelist in the forum, Dr Mathen Nair, said strong leadership is crucial in controlling Covid-19.
The general practitioner gave New Zealand and Singapore as examples, saying they had controlled the infections successfully.
“We see countries with strong direction such as New Zealand and Singapore coming out of it,” said Nair, who is a member of MUDA, the party founded by former youth and sports minister Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman.
He added that Selangor was doing well but cases surged after the federal government failed to share data.
“Data sharing has been a failure. There should be transparency at federal and state levels and vice versa. We have not achieved that,” he said.
Selangor executive councillor Dr Siti Mariah Mahmud agreed, saying that the federal government must share more data with state governments to help in the fight against Covid-19.
“Otherwise, MCOs may just be a pause button (to reduce positive cases temporary),” she said.