What is the size of the Covid-19 epidemic in Malaysia? By DR AMAR-SINGH HSS

Malaysiakini : COMMENT | There are many individuals who have expressed reassurance with the small number of daily new coronavirus cases reported and the slow growth of our epidemic. I have seen many posts on various social media regarding this, often with some comparison with countries doing worse than us. But this is false reassurance if you look at the bigger picture.

The number of tests we do determines the cases we find and report. If we compare Canada and Malaysia (below), a comparison I have seen online as our population sizes are similar, you will note (top) that they have many more cases than us. But also note (bottom) that they do a huge number of tests per million population compared to us. The stark similarity of both graphs speaks for itself. In this epidemic, you get the numbers you test for.

Allow me to illustrate how we could look at the data regarding our epidemic. I am trying to answer the question: “What is the size of the coronavirus epidemic in Malaysia? First, recognise that our testing numbers are limited. The Ministry of Health (MOH) only does what they call "targeted" testing and does not test widely outside of that criteria.

The table below shows the test results available each day from the testing of new cases for the past two weeks. Except for one outstanding day (March 27), our test availability is generally between 1,500-3,500 cases each day. We have been informed by MOH that currently, we can do 11,500 tests each day. However, only about 20 percent of these tests are used to look for the spread of the virus in the community. 

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