Covid-19 in Malaysia - the story so far (as of Jan 2021)

First post of 2021. As 2020 is now history, unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic is still very much a current issue and is even CREATING history as new records in daily new detection seem to be made almost every week. Looking at some available data, this has led me to several observations.

Firstly, forgive the poor rendering above. At the top is basically what I keyed into MS Project, based on the start / end dates. And below it is a screenshot of the graph from FreeMalaysiaToday. I roughly scaled the two and lined up mid Mar'20 (when the MCO started) and end Dec'20, to see how the trend in new cases overlays with the xMCO phases. I've updated the RMCO extension up to 31 Mar 2021, as well as the CMCO extensions for Selangor, KL and Sabah up to 14 Jan 2021, as this is the latest information available as of today.

Secondly, a disclaimer, this is just my own opinion. I'm not an expert on the subject matter nor am I a politician, just an engineer looking at some data, and voicing my thoughts out aloud.

Now, the first vertical red arrow is where the number of confirmed new cases has dropped to nearly zero, somewhere in mid Jun'20. This is roughly the end of the 1st Conditional MCO extension. At that point in time, things were looking good, so declaring a phase of Recovery MCO (RMCO) for the next 3 months seemed like a logical move.

The second vertical red arrow where we start to see a rise in new cases, which shoot up somewhere in Oct'20. Remember the Sabah election, which took place end of Sept'20? This might be linked partially to the rising rate of new cases, but there must be some other factors at work too.

Now, some observations. Up until the end of the original RMCO (end Aug'20), there was no spike yet, so the RMCO could have been called off based on data. However, it was extended to the end of Dec'20 - perhaps to be on the safe side.

Also, the CMCO/EMCO/TEMCO started again in Mid Oct'20, in various states and locations. However, this time, the growth rate did not stabilize and continued to climb steadily. What could be the reason for this?

- People were tired of movement restriction and hence more lapses in SOP (evidently more people were caught during this time) by individuals and even organizations

- Sabah elections (though it is not clear through contact tracing how much of an impact this made to today's situation)

- Travelling allowed again + year-end festive season + school holidays

- More tests (even if the detection rate is the same, a larger sample size will result in a higher number of detected cases, for example, 10% of 1000 is more than 10% of 100)

So, clearly, whatever was done (or not done) towards the end of the 1st half of 2020 was clearly no longer effective. Perhaps this time, the government is actually not as strict as before, due to pressure to maintain the economy as well as the people's sentiments (eg, religious / social activities) or perhaps there are more positives as there are more tests now (especially for foreign workers). Whatever the reason, there does not seem to be any deep analysis as to what is the actual root cause based on available data. Without this, it is unlikely that the root cause of increasing daily new cases will be discovered and thus, effective corrective and preventive actions cannot be drawn up and implemented.

We should not just doing the same as before and hoping for the best - as the saying goes "doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different outcome is INSANITY". Extending the RMCO/CMCO/xMCO further with "generic" controls would likely be futile.

While we are waiting with hope for a deux ex machina (that is, the vaccine) - for one thing, implementing a successful vaccination program would be a challenge in itself and take some time till everyone is inoculated. And secondly, by the time this happens, we would have endured much more suffering and loss of life.

Well, hope everyone out there stays safe and healthy. Thanks to all the frontliners who are putting their best effort and lives on the line - let's all do our part and get through this challenge!