Dawn of a new pattern of daily new Covid 19 cases.

Something amazing happened yesterday.  MOH had found 3 clusters all involving foreign workers in Pahang

• 7 from a plantation in Bera
• 6 from a timber factory in Maran
• 1 from a construction company in Maran

What was so amazing about a group of foreign workers getting COVID 1?

Well for a long time, I have suggested that MOH should complement its targeted testing programme with some random sampling so that we can identify new cases before they become too large.

Guess what.  

MOH said that the 3 clusters in Pahang are part of its surveillance or random sampling.  At least we now know that this form of testing is being done. Maybe there are some clued on people in MOH.  I am very confident that if MOH has a well planned random sampling plan, coupled with  testing initiatives by some companies, we will be able to nip clusters in the bud.

Over the past week, there seems to be a new pattern appearing in the chart of the daily cases

• There will be days of low cases – possibly due to sporadic spread or old clusters
• And then there will be jumps due to a new cluster

You know the history of clusters.  They seemed to be discovered not only suddenly, but also when the numbers are big enough cos the members tend to be infected about the same time thru either staying or working together.  So when new clusters are found, we have the jump in the number of daily cases. 

The worst part of such clusters is that most likely there will be more cases as MOH will then sweep in to do the testing and isolating of the contacts.

Again you know that the index case to contact ratio.  It is something like 1: 30 (For the 1 Wisma Putra case, MOH tested 46 contacts).  So the "follow up" cases will not be small.

Then come the 3rd step - in 2 or 3 weeks time, the next generation of infection will be reported. Just look at the Pedas cluster, the Cheras Mall cluster.

From a curve-fitting perspective, I have not figured out what to do. I would need to mirror a 3 stage process with first a base sporadic cases and then a cluster spike that lasts for a few days initially.  Then the cluster spike will re-appear 2 or 3 weeks ago.  I don't think I am being facetious.  It is what the data says.

·    Probably too complicated!

So I do wonder how MOH is going to forecast the number of cases as it contemplates the end or extension of the CMCO sometime in the coming week.

The only good piece of news is that we now have the additional testing capacity sorted out.  Hopefully, more of the spare capacity can be channeled to random testing.

MOH had these statistics the day before

• MOH is now able to carry out nearly 30,000 PCR tests daily and has a stockpile of up to 200,000 rapid test kit (RPT) antigens
• Of the 200,000 RTK, less than 5,000 have been used.
• As at Friday (May 29), the lab max capacity was 29,789 with 29,015 samples being tested

So can anyone explain why the average number of daily tests reported by Worldodometer for the past 5 days averaged only 6,700?  

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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.