We have passed week 8 of the CMCO and can see the first sign of the decline in the number of weekly cases - refer to Chart 1.
We all know that the CMCO is not going to be as effective as the MCO.
For those who have forgotten, it took week 5 of the MCO to see the first sign of weekly decline.
Mathematically you can say that the CMCO is taking 60 % longer to bring the number of cases down
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| Chart 1 |
Positivity rates
The other good news is that after so many weeks, we are beginning to see a drop in the test positivity rates as can be seen in Chart 2.
The current weekly rate of 6.3% is close to the Mac 6.7% but at least is it coming down.
I hope that this is the start of a downtrend and not some temporary decline like that for the week of 29 Oct - 4 Nov.
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| Chart 2 |
The positivity rate together with a decline in the number of weekly cases is supposed to be a leading indicator. So we are likely to see a weekly decline from now onwards
Keep our fingers crossed.
Regional Performace
If you breakdown the number of weekly cases by regions as shown in Chart 3 below, you can see that for Sabah & Kedah, the decline from the peak has been slow.
At the projected rate as shown by the blue trend line, it will probably take another month for the number of weekly cases in Sabah & Kedah to get below 500 cases per week.
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| Chart 3 |
If you follow the same trendline for the Other region, it would another 2 to 3 months before the Other regions reach a stage of fewer than 500 cases per week.
If correct we will have the CMCO ending only around Chinese New Year 2021. Is this too long?
The point is that for the Peninsular part of the country, we seemed to have new hot spots. For example, Johore is coming up as the next area to be hit.
And for the central region of Selangor, KL, and Putrajaya, the 7 days moving average as can be seen from Chart 4 below has yet to show any real decline.
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| Chart 4 |
Conclusion
If you believe that numbers don't lie, then you would conclude as follows
- For the central region, I expect the CMCO to be extended for at least another month
- For the whole country, expect to see more than 500 cases per week for another 2 months.
Note that during the Mac wave, we went from MCO to CMCO 8 weeks after the MCO was implemented.
If we accept that the current CMCO is taking 60% longer to bring the virus under control, then we would expect the virus to be under control after 13 weeks from the CMCO period ie around mid-Jan.
OK, the above is a simplistic analysis but I have yet to see anyone providing a statistical or another mathematical model to predict how long the CMCO will last.
I am sure it will not end on 9 Dec for Selangor and KL
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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.
