PETALING JAYA: Despite a South African study suggesting that the acute phase of the Omicron surge has passed, Malaysians should not neglect Covid-19 safety measures, say experts.

       Their advice came following reports that a hospital in South Africa, the epicentre of the world’s Omicron transmission, found signs that “case and hospital admission rates may decline over the next few weeks”, ushering in an endemic phase.

       Volunteers For Community Engagement and Empowerment For Covid-19 chairman Datuk Dr Zainal Ariffin Omar said the public must continue to adhere to the standard operating procedure, to ensure good health and safety despite reports indicating that Omicron caused a less severe disease compared to Delta.

       “We must not let our guard down,” he said.

       He added that there is hope that Malaysia could move into the endemic phase soon, now that more people have been fully vaccinated and are getting their boosters.

       “The Omicron variant is found to be milder and the vaccinated human body will produce natural immunity, so the number of deaths has decreased tremendously.”

       Universiti Putra Malaysia medical epidemiologist Assoc Prof Dr Malina Osman said health authorities would have to look into the details such as the hospitalisation rate before Covid-19 could be declared as endemic in Malaysia.

       She noted that lately, many who were hospitalised for Covid-19 were children who were not vaccinated.

       “Therefore, it is better for us to get more children vaccinated and study the situation in our country before moving into the endemic phase,” she said.

       Universiti Malaya epidemiologist Prof Datuk Dr Awang Bulgiba Awang Mahmud said the question on endemic stage requires debate and consideration.

       “An endemic state does not happen just because we declare it to be so.

       “We need to establish that there exists a constant level of disease over a period of time,” he said.

       He pointed out that an endemic state can exist with intermittent outbreaks, which may be mitigated by effective treatments, vaccine boosters and targeted measures, and at the same time, the economy is kept open with minimal disruption.However, he said if treatments and vaccines become ineffective, non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) will return.

       “If an endemic state occurs without intermittent outbreaks, two things may happen. If endemic levels of disease are low, normal life may resume but if endemic levels remain high, NPIs will remain in some form or other,” he said.

       Dr Awang Bulgiba said a good composite index to determine whether Malaysia has reached an endemic state needs to be created.

       The list of indicators should include cases and deaths per capita, test positivity rate, ratio of new cases to discharges, proportions in each clinical category, bed occupation rates, locality and cluster-specific infectivity rate, virus genotype, and vaccine effectiveness, among others.

       “Milder illness is not necessarily due to the virus being weaker but may point to evidence of long-term population immunity prevailing over the variant,” he added.

       Dr Awang Bulgiba said if booster doses are administered quickly, Omicron may lead to a short, sharp surge of infections due to waning antibody levels followed by a rapid fall in infection numbers as booster doses re-establish widespread population-level immunity.

       As such, he said if the country can weather an Omicron-fuelled infection surge, there is a likelihood that an equilibrium will be established between the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its human host.

       “Such an equilibrium will mark the start of an endemic state unless another variant emerges, which would upend such an equilibrium,” he added.