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PETALING JAYA: Malaysia had the highest Covid-19 (Rt) reproduction number of 1.57 on Sept. 15 among six other countries in the region, according to a Britain-based disease modeling center.
The Center for Mathematical Modeling of Infectious Diseases on its website “Epiforecasts” estimated that Malaysia’s Covid-19 reproduction number on September 15 was 1.57, followed by Singapore with 1.15, Thailand with 1.1 , Indonesia with 1.06 and the Philippines with 1.0.
Two countries that recorded a Covid-19 reproduction rate below 1.0 were Vietnam with 0.61 and Cambodia with 0.49.
However, data were not available for Myanmar, Brunei and Laos.
The R, or reproduction number, is the infectivity rate and estimates the average number of people a Covid-19 positive patient can infect.
“Our modeling framework, based on open source tools, takes into account delays in uncertain reports, so the number of reproduction is estimated based on underlying latent infections and not on reported cases or deaths,” he said. your website.
The center, which is located in the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, claims to be a multidisciplinary group of epidemiologists, mathematicians, economists, statisticians and clinicians. While the center’s estimate of 1.57 on September 15 for Malaysia was close to the Ministry of Health’s figure of 1.58 on September 13, it did not explain why this was higher than the infectivity rates in Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines, which have a much higher number of cases. .
Other countries severely affected by the pandemic, such as Great Britain, which has a total of 390,358 cases, also had a slightly lower reading than Malaysia.
Malaysia’s Rt peaked at 2.34 on September 8 and at 2.30 on September 11.
Health Director General Tan Sri Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah previously warned that keeping the Rt below 1.60 was crucial to avoid a new wave of Covid-19 infections in the country.
On September 18, the British government stated on its official website that the R number in the country was estimated to be between 1.1 and 1.4, and that the number of new infections was increasing between 2% and 7%. every day.
“An R number between 1.1 and 1.4 means that, on average, every 10 infected people will infect between 11 and 14 more people,” he said, noting that there was a widespread growth of the epidemic throughout the country.
According to the Daily Mail, the R-value for Britain estimated by Imperial College’s Covid-19 response team was 2.4 before the lockdown began.
But some experts looking at outbreaks around the world have estimated that this could be closer to the 6.6 mark.
“Estimates of the R number vary because the actual size of the pandemic remains a mystery and how fast the virus spreads depends on the environment,” he said.
The virus will spread faster in densely populated cities with public transportation as the main method of transportation.
When asked why Malaysia posted a higher Rt compared to other countries that reported much higher cases in the region, the Chairman of the Association of the Malaysian Physicians Coalition, Dr. M. Raj Kumar, said that the number was not fixed.
Instead, it changes as our behavior changes or as immunity develops.
“Rt does not depend on the number of cases in the country, but on how many more people can be infected by an infected case,” he said.
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