The Impact of United Kingdom and Malaysia's Inherent Health Systems on Their COVID‐19 Responses: A Comparison of Containment Strategies

• Published date: 01 September 2021
• Author: Shereen Allaham,Isabel‐Cathérine Demel,Intesar Nur,Faizul Nizam Abu Salim,Logan Manikam
• Date: 01 September 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/wmh3.412

571

doi: 10.1002/wmh3.412

© 2021 The Authors. World Medical & Health Policy published by

Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Policy Studies Organization.

The Impact of United Kingdom and Malaysia's Inherent

Health Systems on Their COVID‐19 Responses: A

Comparison of Containment Strategies

Shereen Allaham , Isabel‐Cathérine Demel, Intesar Nur, Faizul Nizam Abu

Salim, and Logan Manikam

In March 2020, the outbreak of COVID‐19 was officially declared a global pandemic by the World

Health Organization. Given the novelty of the virus, and hence, lack of official guidance on effective

containment strategies, individual countries opted for different containment approaches ranging from

herd immunity to strict lockdown. The opposing strategies followed by the United Kingdom and its

former colony, Malaysia, stand exemplary for this. Real‐time polymerase chain reaction was im-

plemented for testing in both counties. Malaysia acted with strict quarantining rules and infection

surveillance. The United Kingdom followed an initially lenient, herd‐immunity approach with strict

lockdown only enforced weeks later. Although based on the same health‐care structure historically,

Malaysia developed a more unified health system compared with the United Kingdom. We suggest

that this more centralized structure could be one possible explanation for why Malaysia was able to

react in a more timely and efficient manner, despite its closer geographic proximity to China. We

further explore how the differences in testing and quarantining strategy, as well as political situation

and societal compliance could account for the discrepancy in the United Kingdom's versus Malaysia's

relative success of COVID‐19 containment.

Key Points

1. Different countries employed a range of strategies toward the COVID‐19 pandemic, with

varying levels of success.

2. Malaysia's strict rule enforcement were reflected both in quantitative and qualitative

terms.

3. Despite the closer geographical proximity to the source of the outbreak, Malaysia fared better

than the United Kingdom in its response to the pandemic, suggesting that there are valuable

lessons to be learned for the developed from developing, limited‐resource countries.

KEY WORDS: COVID‐19, community spread, inherent health system, pandemic response, public

health

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