Communicating COVID-19 Effectively in Malaysia: Challenges and Recommendations

Summary

Malaysia first encountered COVID-19 in January 2020 and the crisis has now dragged on for almost two years. Initially lauded for the successful containment of the virus in early 2020, a combination of factors led to a sudden deterioration in conditions. In early 2021, there was a sudden escalation in infections and deaths which peaked in August. Today COVID-19 is being cautiously treated as “endemic” and the economy is slowly reopening given the decline in numbers since August 2021.

For a population of about 32.7 million, positive infection and death rates were relatively high. Total cumulative infections and deaths as at 4 December 2021 stood at 2,643,620 cases and 30,538 deaths respectively. Table 1 indicates the severity of Malaysia’s COVID-19 experience in comparison to several other countries.

The country with the closest population to Malaysia is Peru. However, while infection numbers there seem lower than that of Malaysia, deaths are higher. Within the immediate vicinity of Southeast Asia, Malaysia has the highest numbers in terms of deaths and infections. The other countries were cited for their international interest in the news given their high infections or citizens’ unrest in response to COVID-19 restrictions. Other sources note that Malaysia has the fourth highest death rate in Asia, after three Middle Eastern countries. For all of these countries, infection and death numbers are often underreported for myriad reasons.

The number of deaths in Malaysia in the month with the highest mortality (August 2021) alone stood at 7,640; 25.4 per cent of cumulative deaths throughout the 23-month pandemic period. Of the total cumulative deaths, 6,077 (20.2 per cent) were Brought in Dead (BID), meaning that they died outside of a healthcare facility. These figures and widespread images of army field hospitals set up across the country clearly indicate how overburdened the country’s healthcare system was over the worst of the pandemic period.

It is broadly understood that an “infodemic” accompanied COVID-19 pandemic woes worldwide. An “infodemic” is defined by the World Health Organization as “an over-abundance of information” that makes it difficult for people to discern fact from fake news, resulting in a lack of accurate knowledge of what to do in the coronavirus crisis. Within this spectrum of false information lies the notion of “disinformation” which is “deliberately propagated false information” and “misinformation” or “false information that may have been unintentionally propagated.”