A Week After The Start Of The CMCO And ....Yep, It Looks Like We Are Indeed On A Plateau...

Designed by Freepik

After one week of the CMCO, the figures confirm that we are on a plateau.   I find it hard to see why it would come down in the coming weeks given the many people going back to work. 

Date                   Ave no of daily cases

4 - 10 May                 51

27 Apr - 3 May          74

20 - 26 Apr                56

Don't be misled by the recent news about the foreign workers as they were probably infected prior to the CMCO.  The numbers this week will be a good indicator of what to come in the following few weeks.

I came across an article that said that if we are going to have any realistic plan over the next 12 months, we must understand the virus and the various measures taken to control it.   The challenge for Malaysians is not just trying to understand the virus, but you also have to be a detective in order to unravel the many things being unsaid about what is happening and/or the govt policy responses.

For example, looking at the recent news that the PJ Old Town area has been EMCO, it suggests that the EMCO threshold is > 20 cases within the locality in a short space of time.  About 2.600 residents are affected and all will be screened.  The first batch of 509 people comprising 361 locals and 148 foreigners were screened yesterday, the first day of the EMCO and at this rate it will take about 5 days to cover them all.

Unfortunately, it does not help the residents of a particular area very much to anticipate an EMCO if you listen to the official news as the number of daily cases reported by location is not granular enough.  So you will have to depend on your local community sources and gossip!! 

Secondly, the exponential growth characteristics don’t provide much time for anticipating a lockdown. A good example is the Pedas, Negri chicken plant where the number of cases went from 60 cases on 8 May to 131 cases by 10 May.  The worst part is that the test numbers are only available a few days after testing.

What is the moral of the story? Apart from being a committee member of the local residents’ association, or some direct line with the hardware shop selling barb wires, have 2 weeks of provisions stocked up just in case!!

- - - - - - - - - -  - - - -

I am not sure what to make of 2 news articles yesterday.

• A family member of 7 in Perak who had complied with the MCO for almost 2 months was tested positive when he was about to return to work in Johore.  None of the family members reported sick.  

• Some members of a 20,000 followers Facebook page that was initially established for workers commuting between Johore and Singapore had appealed to the Malaysian PM to be allowed to commute daily to Singapore on grounds that the majority of the cases in Singapore were from migrant workers staying in dormitories and that the community spread cases were less than 10 each day.  They are comparing themselves with the lorry drivers who have been allowed to do such things.

One explanation for the first news is that all the 7 members had mild and/or asymptomatic Covid 19 and it was fortunate that the MCO prevented them from being a walking spreader.

As for the Malaysian commuting to Singapore, if their logic holds there is no reason to have the whole of Singapore under a lockdown.  I suspect that the Singapore authorities do not have any indication of how far the infection has spread from the migrant community to the general population. Singapore does not do mass testing and is probably waiting for the lockdown to serve as a quarantine period for these “untested mild or asymptomatic” cases. 

The moral of both these cases is that there may be many more mild or asymptomatic cases than we know and the general public has yet to understand this picture.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Be fearless to get more to Stay Safe, Share this Blog

PS: This blog is for me to better understand COVID 19 as this will impact my investments. If you are also into equities, follow me at i4value.asia

Disclaimer:  I am not an epidemiologist, healthcare worker, pharmacist or staff in the Ministry of Health, but rather is someone with a strong interest in numerical analysis.  The content is an attempt to understand what is happening in the battle against Covid 19 from a data-based perspective. The opinions expressed here are based on information extracted from readily available public sources but I do not warrant its completeness or accuracy and should not be relied on as such.