PETALING JAYA: An analysis of Health Ministry data showed that the seven-day average of active Covid-19 cases in intensive care units (ICU) for four states and Kuala Lumpur have either plateaued or shown only a slight increase this past month.
The states are Kedah, Negri Sembilan, Terengganu and Pahang.
According to the CovidNow website, four other states have shown a week-on-week increase in hospital admissions, with Negri Sembilan recording the highest increase at 22% with 69% hospital bed utilisation, followed by Penang at 15% increase with 63% hospital bed utilisation.
Perlis recorded an 8% increase in hospital admissions with 64% hospital bed utilisation while Terengganu recorded a 6% increase with 76% hospital bed utilisation.
As of Dec 12, the ICU utilisation rate in Malaysia is 59.7%, with Putrajaya having the highest rate of 80%, followed by Selangor (75.8%) and Klang Valley (73.6%).
Meanwhile, Labuan has the lowest ICU utilisation rate of 33.3%.
Universiti Sains Malaysia virology scientist Dr Muhammad Amir Yunus said the current ICU rate at around 60% was much better than when cases were at the peak with the Delta variant between May and September this year.
“However, recent study shows that the neutralising capability of people who are completely vaccinated has been significantly lowered with Omicron compared to previous variants of concern (VOCs), which is about 41-fold.
“This shows that it’s useful to have a vaccine booster to top up the level of neutralising antibodies which have been proven to wane after six months to provide protection against severe disease,” he said.
The current vaccines, he added, might also need to be replaced with other newly-designed ones tailored to the Omicron and future variants.
The most important thing to do now, said Dr Muhammad Amir, was to keep public health measures in place, including masking and avoiding crowded places.
“These are the simple, cheap and effective measures that are highly effective to curb the transmission now,” he said.
Virologist Dr Kumitaa Theva Das said while it might be daunting to hear about the Omicron variant with its many mutations, the public should stay calm and continue with good standard operating procedure in place.
“Omicron has already been detected in at least 60 countries so far. So, it is likely that there may have been low levels of this virus circulating globally prior to its detection,” she said.
Kumitaa said a preprint from the Africa Health Research Institute which studied the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine had suggested that there was a slight decrease in protection against Omicron.
“Even if there is a reduction in vaccine efficacy, getting booster shots would help,” she said.