Foreign students - will this be a new source of risk?

Over the past 14 days, we have an average daily number of Covid-19 cases of 6.5.  This is below my threshold of 10.  

We had two days in the past 2 weeks where we had exceeded the 10 cases threshold.  Nevertheless, I think it is a good sign.

Are we coming to an end in terms of being Covid-19 free?

Not so fast.

The chart below shows the daily number of cases for the past 14 days broken down into the 2 main sources of transmission

• Locals 
• Imported

The overall number of imported cases (49) actually exceeded the local cases (41)

Imported cases

I think the imported cases are not going to go away and may even increase.

Over the past few weeks, the majority of the imported cases were from Malaysian students returning home from where they were studying.

There were over 500 odd cases of Covid-19 from Malaysian students returning home from Indonesia.

Over the next couple of weeks, the profile of travelers coming into Malaysia is going to change as Malaysia is allowing foreign students who have registered to study in Malaysia to come in. 

Our Defense Minister said international students studying in Malaysia's public and private higher learning institutions can return to resume their studies. 

He said that these international students need not apply to the Immigration Department before coming to Malaysia. But they have to register with the Education Ministry or the Higher Education Ministry.

If you have been following my blog, you will know that most of the world has still not got Covid-19 under control.  So there is a good chance that people from all over the world coming into Malaysia may be infected.

A news report in December last year said Malaysia has some 130,000 international students from 136 countries. They were mainly from Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Danger.

Most of the countries where Covid-19 has not been well controlled are from these regions. So it is likely that those coming in could be infected.

Imagine allowing new sources of infection into the country.  We may have SOP and self-quarantine but there are risk points

Firstly, I find it unlikely that we will have good coordination between the Ministry of Education/Higher Education and the Immigration Dept.  So whatever rules, etc made may not be executed properly.  We have enough history of such miscommunication before.

Secondly, I am very worried about self-quarantine especially by students

Our current SOP is that those on self-quarantine must go for another test on the 13th day.  There was news recently that 1,472 who were supposed to go for testing had not done so.  MOH had passed a list of 577 to the Police to help trace them.  The Police had actually contacted 532 so far.

Doesn't this remind you of the Sri Petaling story where we had contact tracing problems and that the Police had to be called in to assist?  Even then it took time to trace them.

Imagine this happening with the foreign students

• we are relying on them to quarantine themselves - how are they going to handle food especially if they are first-timers into the country?

• then we expect them to go for the second test.  As the example with Malaysians have shown, it would be a miracle to have full compliance - what happens if some who are sick infected others before the Police trace them?

I am sure that you can think of other risk points.

Just remember how countries like New Zealand and Australia who managed to get the virus under control only to see new cases due to incoming travelers.  Malaysia cannot be an exception. 

The issue is that until we get out quarantine system foolproof, we are just exposing ourselves.  Maybe one way is to have mandatory quarantine for these students. 

I am sure many of the students are with private education institutions so MOH, Immigration, and the appropriate ministries can work with these private institutions to have this mandatory quarantine.  

We had mandatory quarantine before.  I think we stopped due to costs. 

I understand that private education in Malaysia attracts a lot of foreign students and that this is an important contributor to the economy.  But like all the other sectors of the economy, we need to balance the economic costs with health.

I don't want to be a party-pooper but Sri Petaling led to the MCO and this was an event that was due to imported cases affecting the locals.

Are we now inviting the same problem? 

Local cases

As for the local transmissions, these people must have got infected about 2 to 4 weeks ago

I am sure the locals did not get infected visiting the hospitals where Covid-19 patients are being treated.  They most likely caught it from the community outside the hospitals.

Given that MOH quarantine all contacts related to a specific index case, my conclusion is that the virus is still out there in the country.

So the virus was around the country 2 to 4 weeks ago.  Has it been eliminated by now?

The clear way to tell is to see whether we have any cases from local transmission over the next 1 to 2 weeks. 

Until we get zero transmission among the locals for a continuous period of at least 14 days, we have not eliminated the virus in the country.

MOH had earlier said that they targeted for zero cases come mid-Jul.  I think they were talking about local transmissions and not imported cases.

If you look at the chart, I am sure you can project that getting zero cases over the next 2 weeks will be very challenging. 

The good news is that it does not seem to be causing any exponential growth.  I would like to think that this is due to our SOP – both to help contact tracing as well as to prevent the spread.

So with incoming foreign students and local cases, I think that we are not any time near to eliminating the virus.

Change of schedule

Over the past 2 months, I have been publishing daily.

I think the virus situation in Malaysia is under control and accordingly, there is not much daily news that I could analyze from a data-driven perspective.

So I intend to publish 3 times a week from the next post onwards

Less frequent but more in-depth and longer posts. 

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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.