Sin Chew Daily

January 25 was a crucial day in humanity's war against the coronavirus as the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide breached the 100-million mark, while 2.15 million people have perished.

In Malaysia, as China's Zhong Nanshan predicted two months ago, we hit 187,997 cases as of the day.

We detected our first coronavirus case on this day in 2020, a woman from China's Wuhan.

From that day on, the virus has been ravaging in this country. 11 months later on last Christmas Eve, we hit the 100,000-mark. It took us 11 months to reach the first 100k at an average of 303 cases a day.

We may now take only about 35 days to reach the next 100k at a daily average of 2,857 new cases, or 9.4 times faster than to reach the first 100k.

If our estimate is not wrong, the 200,000-mark will most likely be breached on January 28.

By applying the Susceptible, Exposed, Infectious and Removed (SEIR) mathematical model at R0=1.2, we will have 5,000 new cases a day by February 20; 8,000 cases by March 13; and 10,000 cases by March 27. At this moment R0=1.09.

There are only two ways to break the infection chain: herd immunity when more than 60% of the population is infected; and vaccination.

Talking about the vaccines, global production chain will be severely inadequate over the next two months due to adjustments made to the production lines, with only approximately 50% of the originally planned capacity. EU and the US are fast grabbing up the stock, making it inevitable now for Malaysia to receive the vaccines late. It is hoped that government officials responsible for vaccine procurement will work much harder, or we will have to go on with endless of MCOs.

Mitigating the spread of the virus by means of MCO is a tall order in this country because things have now changed!

We reported fewer than a hundred new cases each day between March and May last year, but now it's between 3-4k.

We have to make it very straightforward that neither MCO nor SOP is not altogether ineffective, otherwise China would not have put everything under control in only about three months. But think about it, when Wuhan was put in a complete lockdown, over 10 million of the city's residents were literally confined to their homes. Could we do that here?

The government has urged the manufacturing and construction sectors, which have the biggest infection clusters, to strictly adhere to the SOPs. If the virus is not eventually contained, there is this likelihood a nationwide lockdown will be enforced.

While this drastic measure may work, it will nevertheless have adverse effects on the economy, education, employment and day-to-day living of average Malaysians.

Finance minster Tengku Zafrul has optimistically projected the country's economy to grow between 6% and 7% this year. Do you think this possible? World Bank has already announced that Malaysia's economy contracted by 5.8% last year, and that this year could be worse!

Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM) president Tan Sri Soh Thian Lai says if the government were to impose stricter MCO after February 4, more businesses will be forced to wind up, sending a lot more people out of work. If this is the case, then Malaysian businesses must take the lead in this war against the virus!

As of January 25, the recovery rate in Malaysia was around 77%, a notch higher than the global average of 72%. However, we still have 42,335 active cases, or 130 active cases for every 100,000 people, still better than the global average of 365. But given the trend of the virus' rapid spread here, we may catch up with the global average pretty soon.

We only have ten days to do our utmost to stop the virus. If we can cut the daily increases to under 1,500 cases by Feb 4, perhaps the government will defer a nationwide lockdown.

The emergency decree plus MCO 2.0 this time have sadly failed. For the 13 days from the eve of MCO up to January 24, we reported a cumulative increase of 41,768 new cases at a daily average of 3,213 cases.

This war is going to be a protracted one unless the government, local businesses and Malaysians at large work together to stamp out the virus.