Sin Chew Daily

The COVID-19 trends over the past half a year have been closely tracking the global trends. For example, 1.28% of the country's population has been infected (2.02% globally), mortality rate 0.37% (2.1% globally), recovery rate 91.8% (85.7% globally).

Although statistically our performance is above the average, the war against the coronations is a protracted one and even if we are able to momentarily put the virus under control, there is no way for us to claim the ultimate victory. Anything can happen as long as the virus is not eliminated from this planet. What is happening now in India should provide an excellent clue.

Today, there are three major weaknesses in our fight against the virus. Firstly, our progress in vaccination has been slower than expected. Secondly, there is a severe shortage of beds at ICUs, and thirdly, Malaysians in general have become exhausted in this war against the virus.

The speed of vaccination is of utmost importance in achieving the herd immunity target, while the ICU bed shortage exposes the inadequacy in our medical resources in dealing with infected patients, and exhaustion means Malaysians will tend to take virus lightly. These are the three factors that will limit our success in containing the spread of the virus.

Talking about the progress of our immunization program. So far only 1.45 people have received either one or two doses of the vaccines, or about 5.6% from threshold for herd immunity. Such a progress compares unfavorably with our Asean neighbors. Singapore has reached 48.9%, Indonesia 9.6% and even Cambodia is at 14.4% from the herd immunity threshold (the percentage of Cambodian population infected with COVID-19 is only 0.09%).

Why is our progress so far behind? One reason could be the supply issue and the second reason is the perceived public fears of the side effects of vaccines, especially AstraZeneca even though mortality from inoculation with this vaccine is only one in a million, far below the 3,715 per million mortality rate from COVID-19 in this country.

To expedite the immunization, the government has to launch a voluntary registration scheme for "volunteers" to receive AZ vaccine early. Such a decision is seen as smart and absolutely necessary, as we cannot wait any longer!

If we fall behind out herd immunity target, we will have to confront the imminent issue of drastic increases in daily new infections or patients suffering severe complications from the infection.

Currently the uptake of ICU beds in Klang Valley has reached 90% and if the situation worsens ICU beds will be in short supply and severely ill patients may not get the adequate care.

CIA World Factbook data show that Malaysia only has 1.9 hospital beds for every 1,000 people, ranking 108th among 179 countries, on par with Cambodia and far behind Brunei, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand. This shows how inadequate our medical resources are.

Based on the above data, we have about 62,000 hospital beds. Given the 34,000 active cases we now have (as of Monday), our medical system will collapse if some of these patients become severely ill.

Due to the shortage of hospital beds, we cannot afford to be picky whether in SOP compliance or vaccination. We are racing against time to hit the herd immunity target before things go out of hand.

We have fought the virus for over a year now. No doubt MCO has caused a lot of inconveniences to our day-to-day lives. Health DG Noor Hisham has said one of the reasons new cases have increased globally is because people are getting virus-weary.

Indeed, it is extremely hard to subject a normal individual to a chronic state of incarceration. Once a while we will tend to remove the face mask to draw in some fresh air, or forget about sanitizing our hands, or stroll in a crowded Ramadan bazaar… giving the virus a rare opportunity to invade us.

Although it is only 40 to 60nm in size, the virus is extremely tough and it works round the clock! While we may not fight it, at least we can dodge it.

On Monday health minister Adham Baba said there was an increasing trend for young COVID-19 patients to become critically ill. There are more and more critical cases involving individuals below the age of 60 nowadays, citing delayed treatment and more virulent mutant variants as major causes.

An earlier global report showed that COVID-19 mortality rate among those aged 80 and above was 14.8%, 8% for those aged 70-79, 3.6% for 60-69, 1.3% for 50-59, and under 0.5% for those aged below 50. As such, a marked increase in mortality among those aged 60 and below should sound an alarm bell in our continuous fight against the virus.

The government has earlier projected that 80% of the country's population (26.1 million) would have received two doses of the vaccines latest by next February.

In that case, we will need to administer 4.93 million doses each month for the next ten months in order to achieve this goal, which is an extremely challenging task.