INTERACTIVE: As Covid-19 cases rise, here’s what you need to know

By YUEN MEIKENG and SHYAFIQ DZULKIFLI

PETALING JAYA: Malaysia is fighting the biggest surge in Covid-19 cases it has seen this year.

Infections climbed over the past two months, with several neighbouring countries also seeing a rise in cases.

The following is a closer look at the current increase in cases, based on experts’ views and an analysis of data from the Health Ministry’s KKMNOW portal.

Seasonal Covid

After several lockdowns, cases fell from a seven-day average of 30,390 on March 10, 2022, to 1,244 on May 7, 2022.

Covid-19 then became seasonal.

The chart below shows what the ups and downs look like since 2022. Click “Play” to animate.

Virologist Dr Jasmine Khairat said cases tend to rise in the middle and end of the year in Malaysia due to several reasons.

One is the high rates of travel movements in and out of the country due to school and public holidays.

“At the same time, it also coincides with the seasonal nature of respiratory infections such as flu and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus, which causes lung and respiratory tract infections),” said Dr Jasmine, who is from Universiti Malaya’s (UM) Institute of Biological Sciences.

She said such viruses tend to thrive in specific weather conditions and often exhibit a surge during particular times of the year.

“However, the spikes in Covid-19 cases do not conform to a typical seasonal pattern because it has been only three years.

“The spikes in cases happen for different reasons each year,” she said.

The current spike in perspective

The number of cases started to go up gradually in October, then rose sharply the following month.

While the current rise in cases is bigger than the one before, hospital and intensive care unit (ICU) admissions are lower.

The highest daily hospital admissions (7-day rolling average) recorded this month so far is 246, well below the previous peak of 336 in May.

Average daily ICU admissions show a similar trend.

Epidemiologist Dr Awang Bulgiba Awang Mahmud said there was usually a lag between infections and hospital admissions.

“As such, the number of hospital admissions will rise in time.

“However, if we go by previous wavelets (small wave), the rise may not be that steep,” he said.

On why the number of hospital admissions and ICU patients were lower in this wavelet, Dr Awang Bulgiba said one reason was because the current variants were not as virulent as the Wuhan and Delta variants, leading to less severe infections.

“Secondly, the people’s immunity from vaccination and previous infections appear to be still holding against severe symptoms from Covid-19,” he said.

He added that some people also continued to wear masks despite the removal of restrictions, which helped to keep the number of infections manageable.

Most affected

The current rise in cases is mostly affecting people aged 18-49 years.

Of the 20,696 cases recorded from Dec 10-16, nearly a third or 5,950 (28.7%) were recorded among people aged 30 to 39 years, making them the single biggest age group.

The second biggest group were 18 to 29-year-olds with 5,499 (26.6%) followed by 40 to 49-year-olds with 3,490 cases (16.9%).

The figures show that the share of infections among the 18 to 29, 30 to 39 and 40 to 49-year age groups began rising sharply since mid-November.

Dr Jasmine said one reason why these age groups are most affected is because they are often engaged in social activities, work and education, which involved close contact with their peers.

“This increased social interaction can elevate the risk of exposure to the virus,” she said.

According to Dr Malina Osman from Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), many people in the three age groups would be workers who are more likely to report their illness.

“Perhaps people in these groups are the most active in notifying their MySejahtera app when they are infected since they will need medical leave from their jobs,” said Malina, who is associate professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at UPM’s Department of Community Health.

How our neighbours are doing

Some of our neighbouring countries in Southeast Asia are also currently facing an increase in cases. 

Singapore and Brunei were the two countries in the Asean region with the highest daily confirmed cases for every one million people, as of data from Dec 9.

Both countries also showed a similar surge pattern to Malaysia, whereby cases in each country spiked in the middle and end of the year. 

On Dec 9, Singapore recorded around 811 confirmed cases per million people, while Brunei had 589, based on figures from Our World in Data.

On such similar trends, Tropical Infectious Diseases Research and Education Centre director Prof Dr Sazaly Abu Bakar said it was possible that our neighbouring countries were also experiencing a similar period of waning population immunity.

Another possible reason could be due to travelling between such bordering countries with Malaysia, said Dr Jasmine. 

“There are also different sub variants that are circulating in these countries, with most cases being infection with JN.1 sub variant in Brunei and also in Singapore,” she said.

The JN.1 subvariant, first identified in Luxembourg on Aug 25, is a descendant of the Pirola variant (BA.2.86), which originates from the Omicron sub-variant.

How long will the current surge last?

Health director-general Datuk Dr Muhammad Radzi Abu Hassan on Monday (Dec 18) said the ministry expects cases to continue climbing amid the upcoming year-end festive seasons.

He said the ministry expects the current spike to end within four to six weeks, similar to previous surges.

Dr Jasmine said cases could rise until February, as there will be major public holidays and festivities soon including Christmas, the New Year holiday and Chinese New Year.

“For 2024, it is going to be as we have seen before with surges and case numbers going in an up-and-down trend.”

Dr Awang Bulgiba said it’s likely that Malaysia has yet to see the peak of the current surge in cases.

He said the time taken for case numbers to double, or doubling time, started to shorten in October and has not stopped shortening.

“It is difficult to say when the cases will subside as official numbers are likely an undercount, as testing rates are not as high as during the height of the pandemic.”

Until then, here’s what we can do as we face the current surge in cases:

(Genially on experts’ advice)