COVID-19 cases to drop end August when 40% of Malaysia population fully vaccinated

Saudi Arabia has donated medical equipment and supplies worth $5 million and one million AstraXeneca vaccine to Malaysia

Norila Daud,
Malaysia World News

KUALA LUMPUR: The situation of COVID-19 infections in Malaysia has reached 20,596 on August 5 and 20,889 on August 6, 2021 and dropped to 19,257 on August 7, bringing the cumulative total to 1,243.852 with 224,120 active cases nationwide.

Reaching over 20,000 new COVID-19 cases was not shocking news to the Malaysians as a few local medical experts a few months ago had predicted it to happen in the third wave of the pandemic.

This prediction was in view of the new variant Delta that originated from India that had infected few Malaysians and to date 199 cases had been detected in the community.

The Delta variant has resulted in a faster, more aggressive and less responsive rate of viral infection to the treatment.

The high rate of COVID-19 infections among the citizens and non-citizens in Malaysia especially in the state of Selangor and Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur is due to the dense population and congested areas around many factories located in these two states.

Selangor had recorded 7,084 as its daily cases on August 7, 2021 adding to the cumulative total to 458,450 while Kuala Lumpur had 2,450 cases and the grand total is 138,521.

Donations from Saudi Arabia

It was reported that most of the COVID-19 infections happened at the work places, especially in the factories and construction sites nationwide. Infections had happened in the community, detention centres, religious places and among the high-risk groups and handicaps, but the numbers are not as significant as in the work places.

The government is balancing between life and livelihood amid the pandemic, but due to the increasing number of daily new COVID-19 cases, it is allowing only specific essential services, economic and manufacturing sectors to convene.

Due to the closure of economic sectors, many employees have been laid off, causing the rate of unemployment to be 4.5 per cent in May 2021 and involving 728,100 as reported by the Department of Statistics, Malaysia.

The Director General of Health, Tan Sri Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah, said COVID-19 cases are expected to start declining by the end of August 2021 when more than 40 per cent of the population in Malaysia receives a full dose of the vaccine.

According to the Coordinating Minister of the National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme (NIP), Khairy Jamaluddin, the programme that started on February 24, 2021 reached 556,404 doses a day on July 29, 2021.

He also said, as of August 1, 2021, Malaysia has received 28,154,280 doses of vaccine that was distributed nationwide. Most of the senior citizens and co-morbidity group had at least received their first dose of vaccine.

Relating to the progress in the vaccination programme, Reuters had quoted: “Among countries with more than one million people, Malaysia is currently vaccinating faster than any other, administering a daily average of 1,446 doses per 100,000 people in the past seven days” (July 2021).

The NIP is gradually receiving good response from the people following the fact that many deaths are among those not vaccinated while those who had been vaccinated if infected are only be in category one and two with mild symptoms. They need not be hospitalised and instead are placed under quarantine at home with the supervision of the nearest health clinics.

However, the cumulative death case is 10,389 or 0.83 per cent as of August 7, 2021.

Saudi plane unloading donations for Malaysia

The NIP is now running very well especially after many developed nations have donated several types of vaccines to Malaysia recently. Japan has donated one million doses of AstraZeneca, China with 500,000 doses of Sinovac, United States of America 1 million doses of Pfizer BioNTech and United Kingdom 415,000 doses of AstraZeneca.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia government has contributed over 4.5 million units of medical supplies of various types estimated worth at almost $5 million and one million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines.

With this positive scenario, the Malaysian Government is expecting to achieve herd immunity in September or October 2021.