October 8, 2024

The Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus was first detected in India on 5 October 2020. However, it was not until April 2021 that Delta-related infection cases began to rise in Southeast Asia. A research team led by Assistant Professor Wei Luo (NUS Geography) studied the resurgence of COVID-19 in seven Southeast Asian countries—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and Brunei—brought about by the Delta variant.

The paper analyses time-space clusters, with space corresponding to districts (or the whole country, in the case of Singapore and Brunei). It analyses the Relative Risk—or an index of the expected number of persons a single infected person can spread the disease to—in these clusters over time. This is compared to the public health measures not related to vaccination or other drugs to determine the effect of these measures on controlling the spread risk of COVID-19. These measures refer mostly to restrictions on mobility and high-intensity group activities.

The research team’s analysis supports the claim that consistent and strict restrictions on mobility and other group activities is useful in keeping infection risk low in times of disease resurgence. This conclusion is illustrated through a comparison between Indonesia’s strict mobility restrictions, along with its consistently low infection risk factor during the period analysed, with countries like Singapore with loosening restrictions and a correspondingly higher infection risk factor.

Read the article here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35861674/