Three months after being identified, Covid-19 quickly snowballed and showed us its ugliest face, forcibly paralyzing most countries in the world - even the richest - both economically and socially.

Humanity is put at the ultimate test when the virus withstands conventional measures, hence, can no longer be treated as a common pneumonia encountered during the flu seasons.

For all we know, Covid-19 is a deadly pandemic that you and I can catch, anytime and anywhere. To staunch its spread, affected countries including Malaysia imposed the Movement Control Order.

As the nation is still mourning over the first two fatalities in Sarawak and Johor, the number of the infected exponentially surged. A euphemism for almost no place is spared from this malignant outbreak.

While most of us are reading this at the comfort of our home, maybe preparing for the next office teleconferencing, browsing recipes to feed the household or perhaps continuously googling the best way to stay away from the virus, there are courageous people out there who knowingly enter the virus epicenter and play with the fire.

They are the heroes in scrubs and layers of suffocating protective gears. Thanks to the doctors, paramedics, first responders, nurses, pharmacists and everyone in the healthcare service who put the nation first before self and risk their life to contain the pandemic, for us.

Indeed, many had expressed due credit to the frontline heroes in the healthcare service for making sure the exposed are screened, the infected are treated and the vulnerable are cared for.

Unwittingly, there are also other people we should be thanking - the invisible supporting the visible.
The people who are not able to stay at home just because they work in the essential services.

The people who long to be at home with the families but had to make sacrifices beyond their call of duty and wage war against the outbreak, behind the scene.

They too, work round the clock tirelessly. There was never any outcry amid not being highly recognized nor accoladed.

One of the many WhatsApp groups I had is named 7 Gagak. 7 of us in it, friends since 2008, all women and work in the public service in the states hit hardest by Covid-19.

Erzny is now busy recruiting new nurses; Arny is looking after the operations of the prisons; Hasmalia is dealing with a polluted river and a forest fire; Liyana is making sure factories are closed down and Malis is on a standby mode.

While juggling with their role as a daughter, a wife and a mother at home, these women are out in the offices and sites braving the outbreak to keep government operations going.

What guarantee do they have of not being exposed to the virus? None.

That being said, I would like to dedicate my massive gratitude to all Malaysians working in the essential services, in front of or behind the scene, for keeping all operations going; the healthcare workers, the police, the media, the delivery guys, the grocers, the electricians, the waste collectors, all the personnel in the public and private sectors.

Thanks for not staying at home and for benevolently serving the nation. Malaysia would not have made it this far, if it had not been for your role as the backbones in the essential services.

The frontliners are all buckling under the strain and doing the right thing at the right time, but, are we?

The least we could do to return their favour is, ironically, to stay at home. Thanks may cost nothing, but this time it costs us to stay put where we are.

Flaunting the order is taking a chance of opening a pandora box - not just it immediately put us at risk, but it also frustrate all the effort to stymie the pandemic.

Whatever happens, Malaysians are in this together, we sink and survive as a nation. We could be physically isolated from each other but in reality, we are staying together in spirit.

We got this, we can defeat this adversity by staying at home so that those who are not could eventually return home safely to their loved ones.


* Dr Zurina Moktar is an expert in business model innovation, technology commercialization and biodiversity conservation. She holds a PhD in Engineering from the University of Cambridge, UK.

** The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of Astro AWANI.