With the total number of deaths due to the COVID-19 pandemic alarmingly over 276,000 the world over as of May 9, one cannot help but ask the question: “Is the number of such deaths in Malaysia growing exponentially?” To put it simply, exponential growth may see the daily death rate double, in say, 24 hours.

Very recently, it was reported by Anna Ziff and Robert Ziff, two researchers in the United States (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.16.20023820v2) that COVID-19-related deaths in China initially grew exponentially but eventually followed what’s called a “power law” growth.

This is welcoming news because without a vaccine, the current COVID-19 pandemic may eventually be contained by lockdowns together with other preventive measures.

Understanding power law behaviour

In order to understand the power law behaviour, we may imagine the many domestic and international airline routes in or out of airports over the map of Malaysia. Major airports like KLIA and klia2 have more routes than the others.

In network or graph theory, these major airports are hubs and the other smaller airports are called nodes. The airline routes joining the different nodes are called links. It is typical of power law networks to have a few hubs and many nodes.

Network analysis and visualisation are very useful for contact tracing to alleviate a disease outbreak. In the present context, each node represents a person who may either be infectious; has been tested and is infected; has been tested but is not infected or has not been tested yet.

Each link represents a contact between two people. A hub represents an infectious person with many links. If a network obeys power law, then there are only several hubs and many nodes with lesser links. The larger hubs are the disease super spreaders. In order to treat such networks, one needs to identify quickly these super spreaders, their close and casual contacts followed by treating and monitoring them.

Unlike random networks where there is an even chance of any person coming into contact with another, power law networks are not random but small world networks where most people have only a small number of links to other people, most of whom are close contacts within their community.

We have analysed data obtained from the Worldometer (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/malaysia/) and generated a logarithmic-logarithmic graphical plot for the total number of deaths in Malaysia against time for the period March 16, 2020, to April 8, 2020. We have chosen the number of deaths since this is a more reliable indication of the severity of the pandemic.

Clearly, from Figure 1, data that is power-law fit is represented by the straight line there with an exponent equal 1.4.

Praise for government efforts

The efforts by the Government of Malaysia to contain the COVID-19 spread must be praised since the national number of identified positive cases and deaths are relatively small.

One of the outcomes from this is the power law growth instead of the dreaded exponential growth of deaths for the period of this study.

This is God’s mercy. Nature also appears to be taking care of itself. Rivers and the air seem to be less polluted as a result of the current pandemic.

This is in line with the Holy Quran Chapter 42, verse 30: “Whatever misfortune befalls you is a consequence of your deeds. But much of it He forgives.”

-- BERNAMA

Prof Dr Mohamed Ridza Wahiddin is the Vice Chancellor of Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia.