COVID-19 epidemic in Malaysia: Impact of lock-down on infection dynamics

Naomie Salim; Weng Howe Chan; Shuhaimi Mansor; Nor Erne Nazira Bazin; Safiya Amaran; Ahmad Athif Mohd Faudzi; Anazida Zainal; Sharin Hazlin Huspi; Eric Jiun Hooi Khoo; Shaekh Mohammad Shithil

The projection of COVID-19 recovery period can be studied from patterns and trends of various countries. From the observation, it was found that the recovery cases from China and Korea can be used as a basis for extracting valuable information. China took around 25 to 30 days to flatten the curve of total cases while Korea took around 15 to 20 days to flatten the total cases, as shown in Figure 3 . Considering a moderate initiative, enforcement, people reaction and behavioral towards Coronavirus pandemic in Malaysia, 28 days of recovery period is quite reasonable to be applied as a conservative approximation for Malaysia. This also supported by 14 days of incubation periods for respiratory recovery for coronavirus patients. The minimum control order (MCO) of 14 days is also being considered to support the assumption. Statistical method based on probability density function (PDF) is applied to fit and match the increasing rate, peak value, steady-state value, and declining rate of the active cases. For initial projection, consider the trend is similar to a symmetrical bell shape of a normal distribution pattern (also known as Gaussian distribution) to forecast the recovery curve of the active cases. The general equation of Gaussian distribution is given by the following equation.