Universiti Sains Malaysia virologist Dr Kumitaa Theva Das said the number she estimated was a worst-case scenario situation, assuming that there were people who were still hesitant about getting vaccinated, given the news of many skipping their vaccine appointments.
“There are people who have asked if the figure I predicted is just a random number. It isn’t. Much of what we do at work is based on trends.
“Trends may change, but in this particular instance, that trend was predicted based on the reproduction number or R-nought (R0),” the senior lecturer with USM’s infectomics cluster told FMT.
Recently, Kumitaa told FMT the Delta variant was close to overtaking other variants and the number of deaths was likely to hit 200 a day in a worst-case scenario, as the health system was pushed to its brink.
Kumitaa said the three factors – the R0, the Delta variant and the vaccination rate – were taken into account.
“Variants are like cars. Say you have a car that can travel up to 50 km/hour and this is the less infectious variant, such as Alpha, and another that can travel up to 200 km/hour, the more infectious kind like Delta.
“Even if you give the first car an hour’s head start, the second car will catch up. It doesn’t mean that the second car is more dangerous, it just means it has the capability to go, or spread, faster.
“Now, imagine if you have speed bumps or vaccines where these cars travel. There are some speed bumps that work better than others, but no matter what, they always do a good job at getting the cars to slow down.
“The more speed bumps you have in place, the more you will be able to slow down the car, effectively slowing down the spread of the virus,” she said.
She said the prevalent Delta strain was highly infectious, as data from 64 countries showed that a person with that strain had a 97% chance of infecting others in comparison to the older strains. If the previous virus was transmitting from one person to two, the Delta variant would transmit to four people.
Kumitaa said looking at the current R0 at 1.16, the virus was spreading at a stable rate.
“Say if our R0 is 1, let’s walk through two scenarios. If 10 people were infected on Monday, then on Tuesday we would expect to see 10 new cases (10 x 1 = 10). This appears to be manageable.
“But let us say 10,000 people were infected on Monday, then on Tuesday, we would now expect to see 10,000 new cases too (10,000 x 1 = 10,000). Slightly less manageable.
“You keep multiplying to get the predicted numbers for the subsequent days. Using our current R0 = 1.16, if the two scenarios were repeated, you’ll realise that the predicted numbers quickly increase.
“But it’s not all doom and gloom. These are, after all, predicted numbers, and vaccination is key to bringing those numbers down.
“Not only does it stop people from being infected and passing on the infection to others, but it will control the number of people infected and also reduce the chances of newer variants popping up in the future,” she said.
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