Malaysia requires at least 2 to 3 months of "total lockdown" to contain the spread of COVID-19, says Professor Datuk Dr. Awang Bulgiba Awang Mahmud who is a Professor of Epidemiology at the Faculty of Medicine, University Malaya and the Chairman of the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry's COVID-19 Epidemiological Analysis & Strategies Taskforce.
Dr Awang Bulgiba said one of the reasons for the surge in unlinked cases in the community was a Health Ministry's directive issued on Jan 13, which said contact tracing should be carried out on only 10 per cent of contacts if there were more than 50 people exposed to a case.
He said this meant that a person would need to undergo quarantine for only 10 days with no second testing.
"Newer variants with an infectious period greater than 10 days would, therefore, be propagated, if persons who still had the virus, but had not been cleared as negative after the 10 days, were free to move about.
"So community transmission continued to increase silently. It was just a matter of time before there were so many unlinked cases that the rise would be picked up."
He said the high 14-day incidence density for Selangor, which has increased from about 80/100,000 population in April to more than 400/100,000 population this month, indicated that contact tracing and mass testing strategies had not been effective.
This, he said, had contributed to a failure in pandemic management as it appeared that the total lockdown has hardly had any effect on this parameter.
He said there was a need to focus on curbing the outbreak in states or federal territories that reported higher 14-day incidence densities than Selangor this month, namely Negri Sembilan, Labuan and Kuala Lumpur.
"But these places have much smaller populations. This fact is lost on people as we are looking at absolute numbers rather than rates.
"The situation in Negri Sembilan is a cause for concern as parts of it are in the Greater Klang Valley area. Economically, it is closely linked to Selangor."
He said movement restrictions would not be effective in the long term if they are not accompanied by a long-term preventive strategy via vaccination.
Therefore, he said, vaccination was the effort that needed to be stepped up, especially in high-risk areas, to ensure eligible and vulnerable persons were inoculated as quickly as possible.
He reminded the authorities of their previous mistakes, amid calls by certain sectors, including the retail sector, to ease restrictions and allow them to reopen.
He believed the Delta and Beta variants had begun to spread in the country.
"There is no doubt that airborne spread is very real in this pandemic.
"It is likely that the Delta variant will displace other variants as has happened in other parts of the world. This is cause for great concern."
Up to June 30, Malaysia had detected 40 Delta variant cases. Up to yesterday, there are 217 cases of variants of concern (VOC) and variants of interest (VOI), 198 of which are VOC and 19 VOI cases.
He said while the Pfizer-
BioNTech and AstraZeneca vaccines were effective against these variants after two doses, a single dose would not offer people optimal protection.
"I have suggested to the government to reduce the dosing interval for the AstraZeneca vaccine to four instead of 12 weeks.
Original Source: https://www.nst.com.my/news/nation/2021/07/704953/months-klang-valley-recover