ABSTRACT
The state government of Sarawak with the help of the Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) has continuously made the updated information on the state COVID-19 situation and its ensuing control measures available to general public in the form of daily press statements. However, these statements are merely providing textual information on daily basis though the data are in fact rich in temporal and spatial properties. Since the onset of COVID-19 pandemic, spatiotemporal analysis becomes the key element to better understand the spread of COVID-19 in various spatial levels worldwide. Hence, there is an urgent need to convert this textual information into more valuable insights by applying geo-visualization techniques and geospatial statistics. The paper demonstrates the prospect of retrieving geospatial data from publicly available document to locate, map and analyze the spread of COVID-19 up to division level of Sarawak. Specifically, map visualization and geospatial statistical analysis are performed for the list of exposed locations, which are indeed locations visited by COVID-19 patients prior to being tested positive in Kuching division, using open-source geospatial software QGIS. It is found that these exposed locations concentrate on the build-up areas in the division and are in south-west to north-east direction of the center of Kuching in September and October 2021. Despite the number of exposed locations published is relatively small compared to the number of confirmed cases reported, both are nearly strongly correlated. The insights gained from such geospatial analysis may assist the local public health authorities to impose applicable disease control interventions at division level. © 2023 Horizon Research Publishing. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
While it is widely assumed that the printing industry is in a state of declining demand, or "sunsetting” worldwide, our study suggests that the printing industry in Malaysia shows a stabilizing trend. Print service providers (PSPs) diversify and exploit the trend for digitization and automation and also explore new market segments to stay relevant. The industry's performance before, during, and after the pandemic from 2019 to Q2 2022 was analyzed. An interview with the top management of PSPs was conducted to obtain views on the impact of Covid-19 on the print business. The findings show macroeconomic factors' are heavily influenced by growth and suggest that demand will remain resilient going forward, making the outlook for the printing industry optimistic despite domestic and global uncertainty. We also discovered that the pandemic has given PSPs a chance to reevaluate their operations and rebuild using technology to support their businesses in the post-Covid-19 © 2023, Journal of Print and Media Technology Research.All Rights Reserved.
ABSTRACT
In 2020, Malaysia began to face Covid-19 pandemic that slowing down the economy from the beginning of March, and at the same time, environmental issues have been a source of pollutant. It has been perceived as the twenty-first century's greatest threat to nature and civilization and has also been one of the foremost environmental problems globally, especially in Malaysia. Environmental issues like global warming, climate change and sustainability has been impacting to the economy, infrastructure and society today. Climate change resulted from a rise in the persistence and the severity of adverse meteorological conditions such as droughts, floods, and hurricanes. Primarily carbon dioxide from automobiles, manufacturing area, construction site, power station, and logging all contribute to climate change by emitting heat-trapping pollutants. Besides, global warming has been primary environment issue in Malaysia. When gases like carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, and fluorinated gases clump together, they act as a dense shield, warming the world, changing the climate, and jeopardizing human health, economics, and natural ecosystems. Meanwhile, sustainability has become an issue as the community are not very aware with the sustainability. Community required fresh air, sources of nature, and a clean environment in order to shape good healthy communities. In this research, a closed based Likert-type scale questionnaire were built to determine the community perspectives on the environmental issues as mentioned above. There were 153 respondent's data gathered and then analyzed by statistics method. IBM SPSS Statistics 25 software was used to performed a simple frequency distribution, mean and relative important index (RII) in order to obtain the highest RII, mean score and the ranking of the aspects. The importance aspect which is climate change condition has been ranked 1 with the highest RII (0.946) value and mean score (4.73). This proven that community are very particular with the climate change and in order to overcome with the issue, community are advisable to practices sustainability activities such as recycling to sustain the environment. © 2023 Author(s).
ABSTRACT
The growing spread of Covid-19 has caused the public to panic and anxiety over the Covid-19 pandemic disease that is beginning to spread by 2020. The government's initiative in curbing Covid-19 symptoms is to recommend Covid-19 vaccines such as Pfizer, Sinovac, AstraZeneca, and others in preventing the benefit of the whole community. The consumption of the Covid-19 vaccine has raised many doubts and negative perceptions. Therefore, the consumption of the Covid-19 vaccine has become a major issue for today's society where some do not want to receive the vaccine or are known as anti-vaccine. The purpose of this study was to analyze the perception, and acceptance of the urban community of Central Malacca in the Duyong area on the Covid-19 vaccine. Studies use quantitative methods for data collection. This study used random sampling to obtain more respondents. The questionnaire was conducted to 100 respondents analyzed and used SPSS software. The survey will focus on respondents aged 18 to 60 to see more perceptual differences by age factors. The results of the study for the collusion test showed that almost all relationships between sociodemographic factors and perceptual factors had negative collusion. The relationship between age and public perception is r =-.12 P <.01. Meanwhile, the vaccine acceptance relationship with the gender factor (r=0.48 P<0.5) also showed negative collusion. The perception that exists is only a blank notion because the majority receive the vaccine well. The adoption of the Covid-19 vaccine is also for the safety and well-being of living together to curb this pandemic outbreak for community sustainability. Therefore, this research can contribute to one of the Sustainable Development Goals-2030 Agenda in order to provide benefits and some enlightenment on the Covid-19 vaccine to the community.
ABSTRACT
In response to the Corona Virus diseases 2019 (Covid-19) crisis, the university students became as one of the Malaysian concern especially when they are stranded while the MCO has been exposed by the government. To reduce the impact on psychological pressure, the university via health center and student accommodation center were instructed to function as social support units. Besides food and other necessaries, the information regarding to Covid-19 and crisis management needs to be disseminated. We sampled stranded university students from Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) using simple random sampling. With 275 responses, results of multiple mediation regression analysis indicated that the role of relational trust mediates the relationship between crisis responsibility and willingness to seek information. However, gender differences were not influence the behavior and willingness towards seeking the information. It is suggested that the relational trust among UiTM students were influenced by the service quality offered by the centers, thus inculcate them to discover more information with regards to Covid-19 outbreak. © 2022, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
The Malaysian government implemented The Movement Control Order (MCO) on 18 March 2020 to control the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak. However, the third wave that started in September 2020 during the Recovery Movement Control Order (RMCO) phase saw a continuous increase in the number of cases. In this study, the exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) was used to analyse the existence of COVID-19 spatial clusters. Moran's index was used to map the spatial autocorrelation (cluster) to showcase the spreading patterns of the COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia. The study results indicated significant changes in the COVID-19 hotspots over time. At the beginning of 2020, the state of Selangor and Sarawak were the first locality to become a significant COVID-19 hotspot. Furthermore, this research showed all affected areas during the study period. Overall, a non-random distribution of COVID-19 occurrences was detected, thus suggesting a positive spatial autocorrelation. Many parties are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, especially those involved in healthcare provision, financial assistance allocation, and law enforcement. Other sectors such as the economy, education, and religion are also affected. Therefore, the findings from this study will provide useful information to all the related governmental and private agencies, as well as policymakers and researchers. © 2021 Penerbit UTM Press. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been spreading since December 2019 and still no proven treatment or vaccination has been discovered. Limited case series involving critically ill patients have been reported from South East Asia. Methods: This is a single center, retrospective case series involving 49 ventilated critically ill COVID-19 patients admitted to Hospital Sungai Buloh, Selangor, Malaysia admitted between 7th March until 16th April 2020. Inclusion criteria are COVID-19 adult patients age more than 12 years old, with history of intubation during their intensive care unit (ICU) stay and admitted between 7th March until 16th April. Data were obtained from electronic health record and ICU progress sheet. Results: Forty-nine ventilated COVID-19 patients were included {mean 60.2 [standard deviation (SD): 9.3], range: 42-79, male 75.5%}. Most common comorbidities were hypertension 30 (61%), diabetes 26 (53%) and chronic kidney disease (CKD) 8 (16%). Mean PaO2/FiO2 (PF) ratio on admission was 115 reflecting severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Fourteen (28.6%) patients required prone ventilation. Patients were intubated for an average of 10 (SD: 8.3) days. All patients received antiviral therapies. The more severely ill patients received either corticosteroid [dexamethasone 11 (22.4%), methylprednisolone 12 (24.5%)] or tocilizumab 8 (16.3%). During their illness, 32 (65.3%) patients developed acute kidney injury (AKI) with 23 (46.9%) patients needing renal replacement therapy (RRT). Average ICU stay is 18 (SD: 10.2) days. Thirty-one patients (57%) managed to be extubated and discharged from ICU while 9 (18.3%) succumbed to death. Conclusions: The majority of ventilated critically COVID-19 patients survived their ICU stay but often suffered from multiorgan complications. © Journal of Emergency and Critical Care Medicine. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Starting 2020, the whole world faced covid-19 pandemic that was spreading across countries including Malaysia. Because of this pandemic, Malaysia government take immediate action to declare Movement Control order (MCO). This MCO gave seriously impact to almost sectors in Malaysia including economic, social and also education sector. We believed that, the students' performance become decrease during MCO. Although classes were continued online, teaching and learning activities are believed less effective than face-to-face classes. This study was conducted to measure the secondary school students' performance during MCO for Mathematics subject. There were 2 set of mathematics score data before and during MCO considered in this study. The independent T-test was conducted to test is there any significant difference of performance between gender for both data sets. Meanwhile, the paired T-test was conducted to evaluate the significant different of student performance before and during MCO. It was found that, there was significant different of students' performance before and during MCO which, the performance during MCO become declined. One of the possible factor that was gave significant effect to the student' performance was lack of effectiveness teaching and learning activities using online platform. So, for future research, a study should be done in order to indicate the significant factor that give effect to students' performance ifteaching and learning activities carried out online. © 2021 American Institute of Physics Inc.. All rights reserved.