‘Living with virus only way out’

KUALA LUMPUR: The only way to get out of the Covid-19 pandemic is to eventually adapt and live with the virus, experts suggest, as the country continues to record a high number of daily cases.

Universiti Putra Malaysia consultant clinical microbiologist Professor Dr Zamberi Sekawi said Singapore was one such country that has moved away from the notion of zero transmission, with hopes to turn the pandemic into a less threatening situation, like the influenza and chickenpox.

Zamberi, who is the founding member of the Malaysian Influenza Working Group, said Malaysia was doing better than some countries in terms of managing infectious diseases.

“The window of opportunity for zero transmission (of Covid-19) has closed.

“Also, there is a possibility that new variants will emerge in Malaysia. The only way to do this is to bring the number of cases down through aggressive vaccination to achieve herd immunity, as well as continuing to wear face masks, maintaining physical distancing, and avoiding confined and crowded places.

“However, even with herd immunity, we still need time before we can see the situation eventually brought under control,” said Zamberi, who had also worked as a technical laboratory officer at the World Health Organisation at its South Pacific office.

In addition, he said, it was crucial to isolate infected people at hotspots as quickly as possible, hence the need for aggressive screening.

In explaining the Covid-19 variants like the highly-infectious Delta variant, virologist Associate Professor Dr Chee Hui Yee said the weak immunity system was unable to kill all the viruses that would then infect susceptible cells and replicate.

She said weak immunity enabled the virus to infect more cells and this would allow more viruses to mutate and eventually produce more variants.

She said errors occur while viruses replicate and this would cause changes in amino acids.

However, when viruses started to infect many people, the percentage of error increases dramatically, and there was a possibility that the errors would cause changes in amino acids and this was referred to as mutation, she said.

If the mutated gene caused the virus to multiply faster, infecting cells more efficiently, then the amount of virus produced would be much higher compared with the original virus.

“This higher amount or greater concentration of viruses will be transmitted out from an individual while breathing, speaking, sneezing at smaller droplet sizes of less than 5μm (droplet nuclei) and these virus particles will be in the air longer in a confined area.

“We need to find out the index case infected by the Delta variant and investigate how many people were infected by this index case and confirm those people were also infected by the Delta strain. Only then we can analyse the true infectivity rate for this variant.”

She said vaccinated people would have antibodies against the virus, acting to neutralise and kill it.

This, she said, greatly reduced the chances of the virus infecting more cells, therefore the number of new viruses that would be produced effectively was reduced.

Aggressive variants referred to variants that might produce higher viral loads and transmissibility, and therefore it was important to wear face masks and practise physical distancing, she said.

“An infected vaccinated person may carry viruses in their respiratory tract.

“The virus can still be transmitted to others if you have very close contact without wearing face masks, especially those who have yet to be vaccinated and have weak immunity.”

Source: NST