If Covid-19 cases continue to rise, the Education Ministry and schools should be prepared to resume hosting virtual lessons.
Dr Malina Osman, an epidemiologist, said that given the consistency of daily instances reported over the past five days, tomorrow’s data will be a good sign of whether Malaysia should explore the option.
“The ministry and schools, in the meantime, should formulate how they want to go about doing this.
“They should assess whether it should be fully virtual or hybrid with very limited physical capacity for rural areas or schools where children do not have the means to purchase gadgets or instal WiFi.
“At this point, schools should also be empowered to make their own decisions on this without intervention from the authorities,”
According to Dr. Malina, if a shutdown is implemented due to the increasing number of cases, it should be for kindergartens, primary and secondary schools.
Candidates for examinations, on the other hand, should be allowed to continue taking their exams, she noted.
“If cases continue to rise tomorrow, which is increasingly likely, we can reopen physical lessons or full physical lessons upon reaching 70 per cent or 80 per cent coverage for boosters and vaccination for children aged 5 to 11.”
Dr. Malina stated that, while returning to virtual learning may be a difficult pill to chew, it was critical to recognise that children, and to a lesser extent teens, were now the primary carriers of the disease due to their exposure to one another in schools.
She claimed that because the majority of them had not been vaccinated, they were spreading the virus to other youngsters as well as vulnerable groups such as the elderly, pregnant women, and the immunocompromised.
“This is why they need to also receive boosters,” she said citing the rising use of beds in hospitals, as well as quarantine and low-risk treatment centres.
According to public health specialist Dr. Safiya Amaran, if schools are closed next week, it will only be for a few days and will extend into the school vacations.
“If we vaccinate the children at the rate of at least 70 per cent, we might not need to extend this partial school closure restriction to them after the holidays.”
She stated that the elderly should be given boosters because they account for the majority of deaths presently.
According to the Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin lecturer, youngsters were not yet out of the woods in terms of deaths.
“If we wait for their deaths to go up, it will be too late.”
Up until February 15, three Covid-19 deaths affecting children under the age of 12 (two of the cases involving children under the age of 5) have been reported.
Malaysia likewise saw an increase in Covid-19 paediatric hospital admissions.
This year, there were 46,194 Covid cases involving children, with 16,810 infections among children under the age of six.
The remaining 29,384 instances involved children aged 5 to 11.
During the sixth epidemiological week, there were additionally 16,959 infections involving children under the age of 12. (Feb 6 to Feb 12).
This was a 160% increase over the 6,524 cases observed in the sixth epidemiological week (Jan 30 to Feb 5).
Of the 16,959 incidents, 6,163 involved children under the age of five, with 10,796 involving children aged five to eleven.
Dr. Safiya went on to say that the effectiveness of boosters could not be contested.
“Look at Sabah, their booster coverage is 22 per cent while their Covid-19 hospital utilisation is 84.9 per cent.
“Sarawak’s booster coverage, on the other hand, is more than 70 per cent with their Covid-19 hospital utilisation at 38.5 per cent.”
Sarawak’s hospitalisation rate has risen marginally in recent weeks, whereas Sabah’s has risen dramatically.
Dr. Safiya further stated that when physical education classes in schools are interrupted, parents should be given the opportunity to work from home in order to keep a watch on their children.
Khairy Jamaluddin, Minister of Health, had previously urged employers to allow their employees to work from home.
Currently, 42.4% of the population has received their boosters.
In total, 81.1 percent of the population has had their Covid-19 shots.
97.5 and 89.9 percent of adults and adolescents, respectively, have been fully vaccinated, while 10.8 percent of children aged five to 11 have gotten at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.
