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Showing posts with label trends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trends. Show all posts

Tuesday 8 February 2022

Get ahead of virus surge

 

 

S. Korea's daily Covid cases hit new high of nearly 40,000 cases

https://www.thesundaily.my/world/s-korea-s-daily-covid-cases-hit-new-high-of-nearly-40000-EH8832745 

 

Coronavirus: Week of Jan. 30 to Feb. 5, Singapore has record new infections

https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Coronavirus-Free-to-read/Coronavirus-Week-of-Jan.-30-to-Feb.-5-Singapore-has-record-new-infections-but-few-deaths
 


You are rawr-some: A person in a dinosaur costume checking in on children waiting their turn and receiving the Covid-19 vaccine jab at a vaccination centre in Kota Damansara. — AZHAR MAHFOF/The Star

 

Health experts are calling on Malaysia to fine-tune its Covid-19 mitigation strategies to cope with the Omicron surge as the nation braces itself for the wave of cases, which is expected to last some weeks.
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This comes as Malaysia recorded over 10,000 cases over the past 24 hours, something which it had not seen since October.
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Epidemiologist Dr Sanjay Rampal warned that the peak of this new wave of Covid-19 cases would be felt in the coming two or three months.
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He explained that the reason for this could be due to the community transmission of the Omicron strain and decreased health seeking behaviour following the floods at the end of last year.
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“If the recent increase is due to the Omicron strain, I believe that could breach the 20,000 daily cases in four weeks,” he said when contacted yesterday.
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The Health Ministry had also predicted that Malaysia’s Covid-19 cases would continue to show an upwards trend in the coming weeks.
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However, following the precedent in other countries like South Africa, Britain and the United States, where the strain had peaked and ebbed, the surge was likely to last weeks and not months.
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For example, according to Our World in Data, the number of new cases recorded in Britain were over 847,371 on Jan 31 but this had fallen drastically to over 60,114 by Feb 5.
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Similarly, new cases in South Africa peaked at 26,389 on Dec 15 but had fallen to 8,078 cases by Jan 4. On Feb 5, there were 6,135 cases.
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Health authorities, said Rampal, could manage the coming Omicron wave by getting ready the country’s public health services, testing facilities, and primary health care facilities to cope with the possible exponential increase in demand for prevention activities.
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“A failure to plan for surge capacity at the district level will lead to our public health services being overwhelmed and higher levels of Covid-19 community transmission.
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“Although the stress to our hospitals will be relatively lower in this new wave, I expect a very much higher demand for primary health care services,” he added.
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Immunologist Datuk Dr Musa Nordin said the Health Minister would need to take a proactive stance and sound the clarion call to counter the onslaught of Omicron by reactivating the Covid-19 National Task Force (NTF).
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Originally known as the Greater Klang Valley Special Covid-19 Task Force (GKVSTF), the NTF is made up of an inclusive, coordinated multi-agency or sectorial team with varying expertise in pandemic management.
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“The GKVSTF had successfully flattened the Delta curve when earlier efforts, including MCOs and Emergency Ordinances (EO), failed, causing critical case numbers to spike in July last year, resulting in a total collapse of health care services, and a catastrophic number of deaths,” said Dr Musa.
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He also noted that the entire workflow involving district hospitals, quarantine centres, government and private hospitals must be comprehensively addressed, with the implementation of an end-to-end automated outbreak management system.
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“Omicron has also taken a toll on health care workers with many falling sick. It is important that our health care workers are all boosted with mRNA vaccines to ensure that we are not short-staffed when Omicron really hits us.
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“There is no need to reinvent the wheel. We have a working model (GKVTF) and modus operandi that successfully dealt with the Delta wave,” he suggested.
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Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia health economics, hospital and health management’s Prof Dr Sharifa Ezat Wan Puteh said if proper mitigation plans were not implemented by the relevant authorities, the numbers would continue to go up in the next few weeks.
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“I would strongly urge the authorities to come up with a proper mitigation plan to address this.
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“I am not saying that they should implement a full movement control order because of its adverse impact including to the economy. But they can implement measures, such as enhanced movement control orders, in certain high risk areas, and re-look at prevention plans to limit movement in public areas like offices and schools,” she said.
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“Those who are able to work from home can continue to do so or perhaps employers can consider implementing a hybrid working arrangement,” she said.
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Although Omicron cases were reportedly less severe, Dr Sharifa Ezat urged everyone not to take the situation for granted due to the rapid transmission.
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“It is true that we should not panic but if we don’t do anything, the situation will worsen as fatalities are still being recorded,” she said.
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On whether the numbers would continue to climb, Universiti Putra Malaysia medical epidemiologist Assoc Prof Dr Malina Osman believes this will largely depend on the public’s commitment to adhere to all the standard operating procedures (SOP).
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“I think the community should play a role as well and help our frontliners from being further overburdened by practising all the SOP,” she said.
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In other countries, including Denmark and Britain, governments have announced plans to lift all their domestic Covid-19 restrictions with Omicron not being categorised “as a severe disease for the vaccinated”.
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However, face coverings are still required in healthcare settings, including hospitals, and on public transport.
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Covid passes are also not required for large events and at public venues, and people are no longer being advised to work from home.

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It's booster or bust for 4.5 million by March 1, says KJ - YouTube

Saturday 27 December 2014

The game-changing trends: social media, cloud, big data in information technology

Information technology players believe Malaysia is beginning to tap into the potential of the Internet of things.

KUALA LUMPUR: Social media, the cloud and big data will be the game-changing trends that will transform Malaysia’s information and communications technology (ICT) industry and spur further growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) next year, says industry players.

National ICT Association of Malaysia (Pikom) chairman Cheah Kok Hoong said Malaysia had started to tap into the rapidly growing potential of IoT, which could be a new economy by itself covering business areas such as embedded device manufacturing, connectivity infrastructure and application deployments.

He said the trend would provide a new opportunity to position the country as the hub for regional IoT innovation projects in South-East Asia.

However, companies would be increasingly challenged by new factors on the back of business agility that came with mobility, security, analytics, and miniaturisation of devices and millennial generation aspirations, he told Bernama.

“Adoption of cloud solutions will also move from conceptual to the practical stage.

“As predicted by International Data Corp’s global market intelligence, Malaysia’s big data market is anticipated to hit not less than RM75mil but many businesses have yet to consider big data as a big business for their organisation and it thus remains at a tactical level,” he added.

IT spending registered significant growth as reflected in the growth of value-added services, which are expected to grow about 13.6% in 2014 to RM68bil from RM59.8bil in 2013.

Cheah said the overall ICT services sector was also projected to grow at 12.7% in 2015 to RM77.7bil.

Meanwhile, CA Technologies South Asia vice-president Chua I. Pin said the country was entering an era where IT had become the central source of revenue for businesses.

He said 2015 would see a shift in the way businesses structured themselves, looking for new engagement and revenue opportunities using connected devices, big data and analytics, and underpinning these new models would be a fundamental shift in the way software is developed and deployed.

“Software will continue to become the primary way that consumers interact with businesses, which would evolve dramatically in 2015 as businesses become more competitive to reach out to their clients, and we will see apps shifting from simply helping people make decisions to being able to predict what people need,” he said.

Cheah added that with the need for more sophistication in the ICT industry, human capital remained the main challenge in the industry towards achieving high-income nation status.

There is a persistent and widening gap of remuneration packages for ICT professionals between Malaysia and neighbouring countries such as Vietnam and Thailand, coupled with the declining number of ICT graduates, he said.

He said although the new trends such as big data and social media had created many new job functions in high demand, the nation still faced a lack of skilled talent in the market. — Bernama

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