Covid-19 is generally a mild disease in children, including infants. However, a small proportion may develop severe disease requiring ICU admission and prolonged ventilation. Fatal outcome is overall rare.
From fever screenings, authorities detected one China arrival in Malaysia with fever; that person later tested negative for Covid-19 on antigen RTK. People may be infected with Covid and transmit the virus even if they do not yet show symptoms.
An editorial from The Lancet says the more worrying Omicron subvariant and one to watch closely is XBB1.5 that has spread rapidly in the US, and had a doubling time of 1 week.
Prof Dr Adeeba Kamarulzaman urges the same effort for Covid-19 booster vaccination as for the primary immunisation programme, besides masking up, early testing and access to Paxlovid medicine, and mobilising GPs for early Covid detection and management.
The seven “alert criteria” are imported Covid cases from China, new variants entering from China, ILI/ SARI increase, new variants reported in other countries, health care capacity, increase in Covid deaths, and increase in Covid cases in the region.
The Covid-19 case fatality (CFR) rate was the lowest in booster groups at 0.13% for first booster and 0.1% for second booster. The CFR for unvaccinated individuals was 1.43%, according to MOH.
NPRA extended the shelf life for Pfizer’s adult Covid-19 vaccine thrice from 6 to 15 months, and twice for paediatric doses from 9 to 18 months. In the Sept 2022 extension for the adult vaccine, new expiry dates are Jan 31 for 13 lots, Feb 28 for two lots.
Anwar Ibrahim urges Malaysians to get boosted, as there are 5-6 million Covid vaccine doses left. This is only enough to increase first booster coverage to 65-68% of the population.