MP SPEAKS | How will govt speed up NIP to achieve herd immunity?

MP SPEAKS | One of our biggest challenges in the war against the Covid-19 pandemic is how to accelerate the National Immunisation Programme (NIP) and shorten its 22-month programme to achieve herd immunity against Covid-19 to seven or even four months.

For the past few days, both Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin and the Minister co-ordinating the NIP, Khairy Jamaluddin, have been avoiding my question as to what is the latest timeline for Malaysia to achieve herd immunity against Covid-19 under the NIP.

I had referred to an international media report last week which said that based on the present vaccination rate, the estimated time needed to achieve herd immunity with 75 percent of the population vaccinated would be 22 months for Malaysia.

This would take us to March 2023 to achieve herd immunity against Covid-19, which was clearly away from the original target of the National Immunisation Programme (NIP), which was February 2022, or the later instruction of the prime minister to complete the national vaccination rollout by this year.

This is a classic example of why the Muhyiddin government has failed to restore public trust and confidence in its disastrous handling of the Covid-19 pandemic so far, for it does not seem to have a clue about important questions on the Covid-19 pandemic, such as its target on achieving herd immunity against Covuid-19 in Malaysia.

The MCO 3.0 total lockdown of Malaysia has entered into the second day, but what is the Muhyiddin government doing about addressing the yawning deficit of public trust and confidence in the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, with Malaysia not only beating Indonesia for the 21 consecutive day in daily increase of new Covid-19 cases (yesterday’s statistics: Malaysia 7,105 cases, Indonesia 4,824 cases) but Malaysia beat the United States for the daily increase of new Covid-19 cases on Monday, May 31, 2021.

On May 31, the daily increase of new Covid-19 cases were 6,824 cases in Malaysia and 5,235 cases in the United States.

As the peak of daily increase in new Covid-19 cases in the United States was 304,951 cases on Jan 8, 2021, the daily increase of new Covid-19 cases in the United States on May 31, 2021, represented a phenomenal drop of 98.3 percent of the cases from its peak.

The reverse, however, is taking place in Malaysia.

Our peak of daily increase of new Covid-19 cases was previously on Jan 30, 2021, when we recorded 5,728 new cases. But for the past six days consecutively, the daily increase of new Covid-19 cases have surged past this Jan 30 peak and the director-general of Health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah recently spoke of a possible daily increase of 13,000 cases sometime this month.

Global daily increases of Covid-19 cases have dropped 40 percent from the peak of 903,343 cases on April 20 to 360,232 cases on May 31 this year, but Malaysia is bucking the international trend and in search of a new peak.

Very soon, it will be routine for the United States to beat Malaysia in the daily increase of new Covid-19 cases.

I had argued that if the United States, Singapore, Germany and France could achieve herd immunity in another four months, China in another three months, and the United Kingdom in another two months, there is no reason why Malaysia should not accelerate its national vaccination rollout to achieve herd immunity by Malaysia Day on Sept 16, 2021, which will make Malaysia Day this year particularly significant.

But neither Muhyiddin nor Khairy could reveal what is the latest timeline for Malaysia to achieve herd immunity against Covid-19 – whether in 2021, 2022 or 2013.

This is a serious omission and I suspect that even Muhyiddin and Khairy do not know what is the target date for Malaysia to achieve herd immunity.

If Malaysia will only achieve herd immunity in the second half of 2022 or in 2023, then those who received vaccination this year may no more be included among those with Covid-19 immunity, unless they get a booster or another vaccination.

This is a serious omission, which needs immediate attention by Muhyiddin and Khairy as they should realise that the slow and tardy national vaccination rollout has become the nation’s Achilles’ heel in the war against the Covid-19 pandemic.

Although Covid-19 vaccines are not the silver bullet to end the pandemic, they are definitely a game-changer in the war against the Covid-19 pandemic.

The government now claims that it has adequate supplies of vaccines for the Malaysian population. In such a case, there can be no justification for the government to monopolise vaccine purchase and continue to deny the private sector requests to buy the Covid-19 vaccine on their own.

LIM KIT SIANG is a DAP veteran and the party's MP for Iskandar Puteri.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.