This thesis examines the differences of law and institutional framework between Malaysia and Australia. The current legislation dealing with the threat and diseases in relation to Covid-19 is still based on the outdated, static legislation. The new legislation amendment should be created and controlled by a specific authority solely in order to address this problem. Malaysia needs to consult the organisations that cover all damages. In order to examine and put into practise new laws from diverse regulatory strategies with the intention of protecting living things, the regulatory theory is employed as the theoretical framework. Despite Australia's decision to not join the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, the protocol is widely used because it serves as the cornerstone for biosafety. At the conclusion of the legal comparative analysis, it is suggested that Malaysia's current law needs to be improved for better governance. This is done by comparing the similarities and differences between the legal and institutional biosafety laws of the two countries. The findings of the thesis more focus on the similarities and the differences between Malaysia and Australia Biosecurity laws. The study concludes that the implementation and improvement of the new law can be made by following the right approach.

COVID-19 pandemic affects variations of countries’ national strategies, policies, and plans of actions while at the same time these arrangements afflicting their residents by implementing a variety of health and legal measures to flatten the COVID-19 curve. This stretches from prohibiting overseas travel, forbidding interstate travel, encouraging work from home closings of some public areas, compulsory wearing of marks and hand sanitisers, quarantine, social distancing, and a mixture of various actions. Malaysia in implementing its laws and regulations on COVID-19 is empowered mainly by the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act 1988 (Act 342) together with its newly imposed COVID-19 regulations and the old Police Act 1967 (Act 344). The movement control order coupled with the social distancing measures has appeared to be the effective actions in flattening the COVID-19 curve. The study attempts to map COVID-19 as a national security matter for the benefit of public health and national security concurrently within the scope and limits of Malaysia’s public health measures and prevention of diseases, in the protection of security and public order. This paper then proposed for COVID-19 and other future health crises or pandemics as national security issues. This in turn legitimising the health, security, or emergency measures, either developing on the existing laws or moving towards a more practical form of law in line with future unforeseeable threat and intervention. The Australian and Italian laws relating to COVID-19 are analysed to provide better insight and suggest solutions enabling countries facing a future emergency or crisis issues.

Preventing the spread of COVID-19 is crucial in flattening the COVID-19 infection curve. General population control measures should emphasise on understanding the knowledge about the disease and importance of following regulations related to restriction on movement. The aim of this pilot study was to develop a valid, reliable and practical instrument on Knowledge, Attitude and Practice towards Measures for Preventing the Spread of COVID-19 in Malaysia. The instrument was developed based on a Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) conceptual framework. The instrument in the form of a questionnaire was distributed online to a sample of 40 adults. The initial questionnaires contained 16, 17 and 14 questions on knowledge, attitude and practices domains, respectively. The content validity was assessed by the experts. The reliability of the instrument was measured using internal consistency reliability, which was measured using alpha coefficient reliability of Cronbach Alpha. The analysis showed that the total Cronbach Alpha value for knowledge, attitude and practice were 0.93, 0.89 and 0.87 respectively. After one item dropped from the attitude domain, the findings of this pilot study show that the instrument is valid and reliable to be used in a further larger study. This study demonstrated that the three scales of knowledge, attitude and practice were reliable and valid for assessing the prevention of spread of COVID-19 in Malaysia, although further analysis are needed to improve especially on the knowledge scale due to the low level of difficulty.