Can we have single digit daily new cases soon?

Yesterday we ended Week 9 of the MCO with an average of 33 new daily cases c/w with the average of 50 cases and 69 cases for Weeks 8 and 7 respectively.  We are definitely trending downwards as can be seen from the chart below. 




Note: the vertical lines denote the respective MCO week

On Tue May 19, MOH was reported to have said that Malaysia is on track to achieve single-digit daily new cases soon as the daily number remains below 50. Unfortunately, MOH did not provide a timeline for this single digit scenario.

My updated multi-layer curve fitting model projected that by mid-Jun 2020, we would still have about double-digit daily new cases.  From a charting perspective, the single-digit number of daily cases would be in late June or in July. 

I don’t want to be the party pooper but I think that as long as we continue to have Returnees, people waiting to be tested from the Tabligh, Tahfiz, and Market clusters, "achieving the single-digit daily new cases soon" would be challenging.

The other unknown is of course the foreign workers as we continue to have double-digit cases from this group. Over the past 1 week, the number of daily new cases among the foreign workers ranged from 5 to 31 cases with an average of 17 cases.   I have yet to detect any trend as can be seen from the chart below. 

With the Returnees, Tahfiz and Market groups, we know that the total numbers still to be tested for these groups is under 20,000 people.  Even though we don’t have the outstanding numbers for the Tabligh group, I am confident that they would be under 10,000 to be tested.   This means that the potential new cases from these groups have an upper limit that we can easily estimate. (Refer to posting Dark Clouds On The Horizon)

But for the foreign workers, the exposure depends on your view of the foreign workers' population in the country as can be seen from the table below

Category	No tested	Population	% of Population tested
Foreign workers	26,425	2 – 4 m	0.7 – 1.3
Malaysians	416,263	31.5 m	1.3

The optimists will say that as the number of daily cases among the locals gets to a single digit, we should have the same proportionate reduction among the foreign workers.   But I can imagine the pessimists saying we have not sufficiently tested the foreign workers and so we will continue to have cases among the foreign workers' community for a longer period after the cases among the locals get eliminated.

So are you an optimist or pessimist? 

The positive news is MOH saying that if the cases involving locals can be kept to 15 – 20 daily new cases, the public health team can cope i.e. don't have another MCO. 

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

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.