The Malaysian Insight

THE rise in the Covid-19 death toll is inevitable given the surge in active and critical cases, health experts said.

Malaysia has seen an unprecedented high in active cases over the past week with more than 128,000 people currently down with Covid-19 nationwide.

The number of deaths for a single day reached an all-time high of 153 on Sunday. The death toll since the start of the pandemic now stands at 7,148.

Critics of the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme have questioned why the daily death statistics are in triple digits when the vaccination drive is already in full swing.

A total of 14.34 million vaccine doses have been administered with 344,961 doses given out on Sunday.

Of this, 9.81 million people or 30.1% of the population have been vaccinated with one dose while 4.53 million people or 13.9% of the population have been fully inoculated with two doses.

Hospitals in the Klang Valley have been packed to the brim, with patients even losing the battle while waiting to be transported for treatment.

Universiti Putra Malaysia medical epidemiologist Associate Professor Dr Malina Osman said the rise in deaths was expected.

“This is expected if we have more active and critical cases. If the number of those who are in the critical stage is beyond the critical level of hospital capacity, higher mortality will be inevitable,” she told The Malaysian Insight.

Malina also highlighted the stark difference in the active caseload where currently there are more than 128,000 cases while during the first movement-control order, the numbers were only more than 2,000.

Malaysian Public Health Physicians’ Association president Dr Zainal Ariffin Omar said it takes time for the infection to progress from being asymptomatic in category 1 to critically ill and needing ventilator support and organ failure in category 5.

He said the deterioration will only be obvious over the course of a few weeks.

“The vaccines also will take more than two weeks to be effective. It does not work immediately,” he said.

“Furthermore, at the moment, we have this Delta variant.”

Zainal said allowing inter-district and interstate travel will not be appropriate at this time as active cases are at its peak.

“Maybe after the next two weeks, we will see a decline in the trend,” he said.

Zainal was commenting on Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s statement last week that Putrajaya will consider allowing those who are fully vaccinated to travel inter-district or interstate.

Malina also expressed concern that premature relaxation of strict standard operating procedure (SOP) may expose those who have yet to be vaccinated to the coronavirus.

“Certain mechanism to ensure the presence of ‘safety bubbles’ or to ease the SOP stage by stage is highly recommended,” she said.

She also raised the alarm that the healthcare system is now overwhelmed with the high number of cases.

She said this could be partly due to people letting their guard down, thinking that they are safe from the virus after getting the first dose of vaccine or being fully vaccinated.

This year alone, there were 6,677 Covid-19 deaths with more than 700 dead-on-arrival cases.

Meanwhile, consultant paediatrician Dr Amar Singh HSS tweeted that an average of 3.3 deaths were reported per hour last month and that increased to 4.3 this month.

“June 10. 2% Brought in Dead. July 13. 4% Brought in Dead,” Amar said.

Klang MP Charles Santiago sent an alarming tweet on July 16 where he requested urgent ambulance service to transport a patient to Hospital Tengku Ampuan Rahimah in Klang, which has been bursting at its seams.

Santiago said one man had succumbed to Covid-19 while waiting at home for three days and a single mother, whose husband died of Covid-19, was stranded at home. – July 20, 2021.