Many Will Be Infected With Covid-19, But Fewer Will Get Severe Disease — Prof Dr Sanjay Rampal

The Delta variant makes it likely that the Covid-19 virus will continue to spread, and we will all likely be infected at least once during our lifetime.

SARS-Cov-2 is here to stay. The Delta variant has been the major circulating strain for many months now and is very infectious. This variant makes it likely that the Covid-19 virus will continue to spread, and we will all likely be infected at least once during our lifetime.

Vaccines are effective for the short term, whereas their long-term effectiveness and safety are unknown. Vaccines are relatively new, and the data collection for long-term studies is ongoing.

It has been postulated that vaccines will remain effective at reducing the long-term risk of severe disease and death.

The older segments of the population are at a higher absolute risk of developing complications. They should be targeted more aggressively for the booster campaign. The evidence is still evolving for other groups.

Herd immunity remains an illusion due to the Delta variant, the high global incidence, and the decreased long-term vaccine effectiveness against transmission.

Rather than prevention of transmission, we should focus on downstream effects such as severe disease, ICU admissions, and deaths.

Malaysians need to work, get educated, and maintain social connections and mobility for a better quality of life. The baseline daily reported cases appear likely to be between 5,000 to 15,000 under these “normal” living conditions.

The daily reported cases may increase temporarily after certain periods associated with large gatherings (elections, festivities, school holidays) but should then “normalise” after these events, given adequate quarantine, isolation, and contact tracing. The baseline incidence will reduce with time as more people get infected.

We estimate that approximately 8.5 million of our population have been infected with Covid-19. The remaining 24 million Malaysians are likely to get Covid-19 in the coming years.

As the cumulative number of cases increases with time, so will the cumulative number of ICU admissions and deaths. However, we expect a lower number of severe diseases and deaths in a post-vaccinated population.

The case fatality rate is very low in a post-vaccinated population, and has been estimated at one death out of 1,000 cases by the Ministry of Health RECoVaM study. Numbers alone tell half the story; it is just as important that Malaysians have access to appropriate care when needed. 

The absolute case numbers are important for district health offices to estimate their Covid-19 assessment, registration, and contact tracing needs. Public health services are the first to get overwhelmed, leading to larger waves of outbreaks.

Our health care system should also continuously forecast and prepare for the near-term utilisation of ICU and ventilation support beds. It is cost-effective to increase public health, primary care, and hospital services for the next one or two years than implement more expensive movement and lockdown restrictions.

A clear communication strategy is very important. Let the experts crunch the numbers and monitor the temporal trends of absolute numbers of severe disease, ICU admissions, and deaths.

For the public, a simpler traffic light system on preparedness may be easier to understand, with the absence of medical jargon. The cost-effectiveness of any intervention should be objective considered before implementation.

It is important to have a clear endgame in place to maintain the trust of the rakyat. It is also imperative that we also counter any fearmongering towards achieving our long-term resilience goals.

Prof Dr Sanjay Rampal is Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya.

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