See Chee How
KUCHING (Mar 1): Batu Lintang assemblyman See Chee How is calling upon the federal and state governments to immediately engage the private sectors to scale up the vaccination of Malaysians and Sarawakians under the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme.
The Parti Sarawak Bersatu (PSB) lawmaker said many countries, including Asian and Asean nations, had rolled out their plans and putting into motion this public-private sector cooperation initiative for their nationwide drive to expedite efforts in achieving herd immunity and economic recovery.
“Five days after Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin received his first dose of the vaccine, 3,500 Malaysians nationwide had been vaccinated as of yesterday.
“This is a far cry from the projection revealed by the Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba on Feb 13 that the government planned to administer around 126,000 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine a day once the National Covid-19 Vaccination Plan has rolled out,” he said in a statement today.
See observed that Indonesia and Singapore, on average, were respectively inoculating 120,000 and 20,000 of their populace everyday.
Given this, he felt that the Ministry of Health (MoH) should step up efforts for immunisation in all the 532 vaccination centres and must quickly enlist all the private hospitals in the country to ramp up vaccination in the country.
He said this would help ensure that Malaysia could expedite efforts in achieving herd immunity under the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme.
He recalled that two weeks ago, the Association of Private Hospitals of Malaysia (APHM) had announced that all private hospitals across the country were ready to work with the government in vaccinating the public to speed up the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme.
At the same time, he said the government must have a comprehensive public health approach involving the private commercial and industrial sectors focusing on the national and state economic recovery targets.
“The business community is in full support of the national vaccination exercise, and many have indicated their willingness and readiness to support the drive to immunize our population to break the chain of the pandemic and ensure that our economy will recover speedily.
“Whether the commercial and industrial activities are considered essential, it is costly to undergo swab tests regularly. It will be more cost effective for them to vaccinate their workers and associates,” he pointed out.
See said the government could coordinate and facilitate such private sector initiative and support for immunisation drive, thus enabling more commercial and industrial sectors to open and resume their commercial operation in phases.
“The guidelines of the World Health Organisation recommendations concerning the engagement of the private sector in national immunisation programmes and regulatory controls by countries such as Indonesia are standards and procedural benchmarks that we can follow to formulate a private sector drive which will complement the government’s efforts without altering or compromising the state’s existing schedule to target priority and vulnerable groups in the process of our national vaccination exercise,” he added.