Kota Samarahan, 25 March 2021: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) research team has recently developed a web-based simulation tool that can help to monitor COVID-19 outbreak for Malaysia. Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology (FCSIT) Senior Researcher Associate Professor Dr Jane Labadin and her team collaborated with the Health Ministry’s Institute for Medical Research to formulate a disease model to help decision makers decide on the best option in mitigating the disease outbreak.

Known as the COVID Malaysia Simulation or COVID-MYSim, it is based on a mathematical model that can calculate the basic reproduction number of COVID-19 cases in Malaysia. The reproduction number, which is the average number of times that an infected person would spread during their infectious period, is also known as the R0 (R – naught), a term that has been mentioned by Health Director General Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah in his COVID-19 briefings.

The R0 represents the maximum epidemic potential of a pathogen and this would describe the possibility of an infectious person coming into contact to a fully vulnerable group of people. Through COVID-MYSim, the formulated results will show the direct relation of human contacts by an infected person and ...