BY now, most of us have lost track of how long we have been in the third movement control order (MCO 3.0) as the new daily COVID-19 infections continue its climb.

Such despondency and frustration are understandable after a prolonged period of being holed up at home with none of us having a clue on when we can return to life pre-pandemic.

But I am quite certain that the worst is behind us now and the statistics bear this out.

Over the past few weeks, the Government has started releasing more detailed COVID-19 data that helps us understand the actual state of the pandemic we are in.

For example, starting mid-July, the Health Ministry (MOH) has started breaking down the new infections into five categories, with Category 1 being patients with no symptoms, while Category 5 are patients who are intubated in intensive care units in hospitals.

Consistently, the number of Category 1 and Category 2 (patients with mild symptoms) make up more than 97% of all new daily cases. Category 3 (requiring hospitalisation), Category 4 (suffering from lung infection and needing oxygen supplementation) and Category 5 patients only made up less than 3% of all new infections.

Put in another way, most of the Covid-19 infections daily do not suffer from any symptoms or only have mild symptoms. There is no need to be overly alarmed over the tens of thousands of new infections recorded daily, although we must continue to follow COVID-19 standard operating procedures (SOPs).

More recently, the MOH has started releasing even more granular data on the daily infections. Along with the different categories the patients are in, since July 26 the Ministry also started classifying patients based on whether they have been vaccinated or not.

For example, out of the 8,783 new infections on Aug 2 in Category 1, 87.7% of them do not have a vaccination history. For those in Category 5, 97.7% of them have not had any vaccination.

This is a consistent trend across all categories of COVID-19 patients over the past few days since such granular data was made public. In other words, vaccination works and those who have not been vaccinated are much more susceptible to the nasty virus than those who have.

But more importantly, our vaccination rate is picking up, so much so that we have caught the attention of the wife of Singapore’s Prime Minister who lauded our speed in her social media.

As of Aug 2, the Government, which has been administering over 500,000 vaccines a day, has fully inoculated over 30% of its adult population while over 61% of the adult population in Malaysia has received at least one dose.

Operations “Surge Capacity” has been a success with 96.7% of the adult population in the Klang Valley having received at least one dose. The Klang Valley has been the main contributor of new daily infections nationwide, making up around half of the cumulative number.

On top of that, the Government, starting Aug 2, allowed walk-in vaccinations at selected vaccination centres in the Klang Valley. The same convenience is extended to those aged 60 and above who have not been vaccinated, nationwide.

Minister in charge of vaccination Khairy Jamaluddin has said that by Aug 31, half the adult population will be fully vaccinated. By the end of October, all adults in Malaysia would have received both doses of the vaccines.

When that happens, infections and mortality will drop and this has been proven time and again, not just with statistics from Malaysia, but the world over.

As it is, we already witness how localities that received fast-track vaccination have seen its infections and deaths drop. Starting Aug 4, Perlis, Sarawak and Labuan will transition into Phase 3 of the National Recovery Plan (NRP), the first three localities to do so.

Sarawak and Labuan were once the nation’s COVID-19 hotbeds. However, the authorities have ramped up vaccinations there, partly because Sarawak was then facing the prospects of a state poll while Labuan has a sizable number of undocumented migrants, many of whom brought the virus from their home countries.

The aggressive vaccination exercise there has seen Sarawak and Labuan stepping towards “normalcy” faster than other parts of the country despite their uncontrollable spread of the deadly virus there earlier.

Those who have doubts about whether we are on the right track just need to look at Sarawak and Labuan. The light at the end of the tunnel is growing brighter by the day. – Aug 7, 2021

Louis Kang is from Ara Damansara, Petaling Jaya.

https://focusmalaysia.my/the-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel-is-growing-brighter-by-the-day/