Ministry: Vaccination helps states keep Covid-19 deaths down
Covid-19 vaccination could be helping some states keep death rates down despite a surge in infections, analysed Health Ministry officials.
Penang, for example, has been recording more than 1,000 new infections every day for the past month.
According to CovidNow data...
Covid-19 vaccination could be helping some states keep death rates down despite a surge in infections, analysed Health Ministry officials.
Penang, for example, has been recording more than 1,000 new infections every day for the past month.
According to CovidNow data, hospitalisation rates and ventilator usage are high but have been dropping. ICU admission rates are also high but appear steady.
Over the past week, the number of actual deaths has begun dropping.
The ministry’s medical development division senior principal assistant director Dr Faizah Muhamad Zin confirmed that Covid-19 death data for Penang was up to date.
“Penang has no backlog so that is the real-time data from Penang,” she said during a CovidNow briefing to the media this morning.
When asked why Penang was seeing a downtrend in deaths despite a high number of cases, Faizah pointed at the state’s vaccination rates.
“You must correlate (this) with vaccination rate, vaccination coverage and ICU admission,” she said.
As of Sept 17, the ministry recorded that 56.4 percent of the total Penang population had been fully vaccinated, constituting 73.1 percent of the total adult population in the state.
Echoing Faizah’s analysis was the ministry’s Preparedness and Response Centre (CPRC) head of data Dr Mahesh Appannan.
Aside from vaccination rates, he attributed the trend to hospitals’ ability to cope better.
READ MORE: How different are the old and new Covid-19 death numbers?
“Cases are going up but if you look at our patient care when it is not at the peak (and) when it is not overloaded, you actually get first-class care in the ICU (and) in the hospitals [...]
“There are so many other factors, your vaccination is fantastic, that is actually bringing (deaths) down.
“The line is not definite (that) when cases go up, deaths (also) go up. It can also be the other way around,” he explained.
Divergent trends
During the briefing, a CPRC Data team official shared that the ministry was studying whether vaccination was indeed causing a “divergence” - where death trends and other healthcare indicators drop despite a rise in infections.
“Before we had vaccinations, we knew that when we have more cases, (we will have) more hospitalisations and more deaths eventually.
“But once you have vaccinations really taking hold, you can start to see a bit of a divergence. Even if cases are going up, you don't necessarily see all the worsening indicators for healthcare, because there is this protection offered by vaccinations,” the official said.
Aside from Penang, the ministry noted that vaccination has helped keep deaths down in Sarawak.
Sarawak has seen a sharp surge in Covid-19 infections over the past month. It recorded 3,480 new cases yesterday alone.
Covid-19 deaths in Sarawak, meanwhile, are in the single digits. Yesterday, the state recorded five deaths attributed to the virus. Faizah confirmed that this data is up to date.
Hospitalisation, ICU and ventilator usage rates in Sarawak are all on the rise but none are over capacity. CovidNow states that the ventilator utilisation rate there is at 41.2 percent.
As of Sept 17, the ministry recorded that 64.6 percent of the total Sarawak population had been fully vaccinated. This constituted 89.1 percent of the adult population in the state.
Today was the second time the ministry held a CovidNow briefing session for members of the press.
Set up on Sept 9, the website presents data on Covid-19 cases, vaccination and related healthcare indicators. It's to enable the public to track the country’s Covid-19 situation.
Last week, the ministry explained why it had begun reporting Covid-19 deaths through two data points - reported deaths and actual deaths.
