YOURSAY | Even vaccination centre becomes a Covid cluster

YOURSAY | ‘What an irony. Healthy people go to PPVs to get vaccinated, not to get Covid-19.’

204 staff members at IDCC PPV test positive for Covid-19

FellowMalaysian: Out of the 453 staff at the Ideal Convention Centre (IDCC) vaccination centre (PPV) in Shah Alam, 204 or 45 percent of them were found to be infected with Covid-19.

If de facto vaccine minister Khairy Jamaluddin is not shocked and horrified by this hugely terrifying figure, I certainly and positive am.

If 400 of the staff members have been vaccinated, assuming all the unvaccinated staff were tested positive, 151 or a third of the vaccinated staff came down with the disease.

This is truly amazing. If the reported case figures are verified to be true, this must be the highest number of breakthrough cases in the world.

What if other PPVs are similarly infected? Will Khairy also close down other PPVs including mega ones? I fear for all and for myself too.

Cyclonus: This is curious and yet confounding at a few levels. Why were all these workers not vaccinated?

Some may argue that you can still get infected despite being vaccinated. If they were vaccinated, how were they infected despite the SOPs (standard operating procedures)? And I'm sure as healthcare workers, they were properly trained and should have practised the SOPs religiously.

Alright, assuming that some of these vaccinated workers were careless, but 204 workers out of 460 infected? Almost half?

Were their vaccinations not working? Is there a new variant out there? Something just doesn't gel.

Khairy should be asking these questions as this could be a symptom of something bigger.

LimeCamel1258: This is the most shocking information I ever read about the pandemic in Malaysia. Why are the staff at vaccination centres not tested on a regular basis?

We stay at home for weeks now and then we go to get our long-awaited vaccination and they keep us for 30-60 minutes in an indoor space with 200 infected staff members.

Pretty much everyone would have been infected during that time, even when wearing a mask. And who can tell us that the situation is not identical with other centres? This is a catastrophe.

BusinessFirst: My gosh! What a mess. If the care providers have been so badly infected, how many people did they come into contact with?

Indeed, why are all these volunteers and healthcare providers not vaccinated? Common sense and logic demand that all volunteers and staff of these centres must be vaccinated and these centres should be the safest of all places since it is to receive a continuous stream of people to be vaccinated.

However, in Malaysia, it is now a cluster. Is no one to be held accountable? Minister? Deputy minister? DG (director-general)?

Unless someone is held accountable, how can we ever hope to improve? Like trains kissing in the night, no one is to be blamed - just human error of the driver.

OCT: The Perikatan Nasional (PN) government, especially the health minister, knows that crowds are not allowed under the movement control order (MCO). Yet these centres are overly crowded, infecting the staff.

There has been no proper crowd control or else this incident won't happen. Everyone can see that there were lots of mingling among attendees and staff.

The PN government did not do brain-storming on situation dynamics with appropriate action for various situations. This whole incident would not have happened if there was a capable person to oversee the daily operation.

The situation collapsed because there is no ownership. When no one is responsible and accountable, chaos takes over. The result is the spread of Covid-19 among attendees and staff.

Proper and stringent rules must be in place to control crowds. Reactive planning won't help much if they still don't get the importance of crowd control in a pandemic.

Protect the staff as they are the most valuable resources.

Anonymous 3467: Physical distancing should be at least two metres, not one metre anymore. With physical distancing of one metre, from photos of vaccination centres and testing centres, don’t these centres look too crowded?

Also, what about ventilation systems of vaccination and testing centres? We should remember that many vaccination attendees might be infected but show no symptoms and also not tested, so they are not aware they are positive.

Overcrowding of centres due to one-metre distancing will cause a build-up of contaminated air in the venue if the ventilation systems are not functioning optimally. In fact, vaccination centres should not be used non-stop for thousands of attendees.

After 200 people have been vaccinated, it should be sanitised and purged of the bad air before the next batch is vaccinated.

Not Bitten Twice: Please spread out the people widely like spreading butter thinly on a big piece of bread. Then there will not be overcrowding. Do not put big chunks of butter on small buns like what we are doing now.

What an irony. Healthy people go to get vaccinated, not to get Covid-19 infection.

Please get all systems go - general practitioners, government clinics, district hospitals, public and private hospitals, pharmacies, etc, to administer the vaccination.

No wonder people are saying #KerajaanPembunuh.

Anonymous 73318: A lot of people probably think that once vaccinated, he/she will not be infected and therefore many have started to put their guards down.

They fail to understand that regardless of which type of vaccines used, it only reduces the chances of infections becoming severe cases, or the need to be hospitalised and prevent fatalities.

The best is to have everyone, staff and the public, stay vigilant and adhere to the SOP. Anyone who is not feeling well should take leave from the PPVs.

Be civic-minded and be more socially conscious to take care of oneself and others.

YellowCat1156: This points to the virus likely to be endemic in the country. I'm sure all of us know or heard of someone being infected despite staying at home and following SOPs.

Vaccination can lessen but not prevent us from being infected. It will however prevent serious symptoms. Someone with mild symptoms or who was asymptomatic must have visited the centre, either as a recipient or as a staff, but it will be almost impossible to determine.

I feel it is not a matter of who is at fault, but probably that the virus is here to stay, and we need to live with it by being vaccinated.

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