Good public health practices needed, alongside vaccination to defeat Covid-19 - Experts

KUALA LUMPUR (June 30): Despite having a large number of their populations vaccinated, countries like the United Kingdom (UK) and Israel have been recording a surge in new COVID-19 cases especially due to the emergence of the Delta variant.

According to Our World in Data, 48.4 per cent and 57 per cent of the United Kingdom and Israel’s  population have been fully vaccinated respectively. Based on the data from coronavirus.data.gov.uk, UK recorded a total of 22,868 positive cases on June 28 and three deaths on the same day.

Hence, vaccination alone is not good enough in defeating the virus. Public health experts and epidemiologists world wide noted continuing with good public health safety measures will be crucial, alongside vaccination.

In a nutshell, keeping up with the new normal along with vaccination is probably the only effective way out from the pandemic. 

World Health Organisation (WHO) director-general for access to medicines and health products, Dr Mariangela Simao, in a news briefing from the agency’s Geneva headquarters on June 25, had stated vaccine alone won’t stop community transmission.

“When you have a community transmission ongoing, people need to continue to use masks consistently, be in ventilated spaces, ensure hand hygiene, the physical distance, avoid crowding, even if you’re vaccinated,”  Simao was reported as saying.

Malaysian health experts also echoed the observations made by their counterparts worldwide, saying that the public must adhere to safety measures at all time even as the country is ramping up its vaccination programme. 

Prof Dr G. Jayakumar said vaccination and herd immunity target should not be seen as the silver bullet in curtailing the pandemic, instead it should complement all other public health measures.

“Our goal should be for us to imbibe good public health measures as the new norm and culture within our society.

“There should be self realisation that good hand hygiene, cough etiquette, avoiding crowded places and masking up will keep the virus away,” the deputy dean (pre-clinical) at the Faculty of Medicine, Manipal University College in Melaka told Bernama.

Dr Jayakumar also said more efforts have to be undertaken to inspire trust in the institutions of health.

“Religious  and community leaders will have to be roped in to adequately communicate, educate, convince the society about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines and to inspire the public over time to imbibe the culture of public health hygiene within the public ecosystem,” he added.

Universiti Malaya head of social and preventive medicine Prof Dr Victor Hoe said with the emerging of new variants of the virus and the country still facing a high number of daily infections, it is crucial that the authorities get as many people as possible vaccinated quickly. 

“In view of the nature of the virus that is still evolving and the emergence of the riskier Delta variant currently, and other factors including many infected people being asymptomatic, it is important that we get as many people vaccinated as soon as possible,” he said.

Citing United Kingdom and Israel as examples, he said despite having a large number of their population vaccinated, these countries still recorded a surge in cases following the emergence of the Delta variant.

Dr Hoe concurred, saying good practice of public health SOPs must be followed at all time including wearing of masks correctly and sanitising the hands regularly, while more stringent border and quarantine controls must be put in place to curb transmission of the more deadly variants such as the Delta variant.

Data from the Special Committee on Ensuring Access to Covid-19 Vaccine Supply (JKJAV), as at 11.59 pm on Monday (June 29), a total of 7,593,179 people in Malaysia have been vaccinated with 2,130,051 (6.5 per cent) of them having received two doses of the vaccine.

A total of 16, 630,764 people in Malaysia have registered for the national COVID-19 immunisation programme so far.

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