I welcome the announcement made by YB Khairy Jamaluddin, who is the Coordinating Minister for the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK). The Minister recently announced that to prioritise the states with high confirmed cases of COVID-19 and low vaccination rates to receive vaccines and allow walk-in vaccination for people aged 60 years and above. These proactive measures are expected to slow down the epidemic in Malaysia.
However, distributing vaccines on-demand at the state level is not enough to prevent the virus from spreading in the community. A considerable number of cases in our country are sporadic cases in communities with no source of infection. Therefore, the guideline on allocating vaccines on-demand needs to be implemented at the community level to prioritise those communities with high infection rates or low vaccination rates to get the vaccines. This guideline is the correct and more effective measures that have been proven scientifically to prevent an epidemic.
Take the data from the Ministry of Health as an example. As of July 31, the doses received by Johor were 2,056,422 doses or 8.16% of the total number of vaccines in the country. We can deem the numbers reasonable but, when we look at the vaccine distribution in various districts and cities in Johor, it shows that it does not follow the high confirmed infection rate and low vaccination rate criteria.
Take Kluang district as an example:
- The cumulative number of confirmed cases in 14 days (July 18 to 31) is 1,486, accounting for 12% of the total cases in Johor. This makes Kluang, the district with the third highest cases in Johor.
- The case-to-population ratio of Kluang is at 0.42%, made Kluang the district with the third-highest case-to-population ratio in Johor as well. In addition, from the recent daily surge in cases in Kluang, nearly half of them are sporadic cases.
- The vaccination rate in Kluang is low. As of mid-July, only 23,653 people in Kluang have completed two vaccine doses, which is less than 7% if compared to Kluang’s population size of 350,000.
- The vaccine distribution volume to Kluang not only violates the criteria announced by Minister Khairy Jamuluddin, but it also hindered the effort to curb the sporadic spreading of the virus in Kluang because of the insufficient number of vaccines received. Thus, it hampers the plan to carry out the community vaccination plan on a large scale and curbing the spread of infection.
However, Kluang only received 7.56% of the state-wide vaccine supply, far less than the above mentioned 12% total cases number percentage.
We urge the Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) to allocate vaccines strictly based on the allocation criteria for high confirmed rates and low vaccination rates at each state’s district and city level. Doing so, it will avoid unscientific vaccine allocation which cause more people in high-infected areas to face more significant risks!
To make the distribution of vaccines more fair and effective, I urge the Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) to announce the distribution of vaccines and the quantity of vaccine stock in various districts and cities based on the Ministry of Health’s daily announcement format. That is, it should cover the number of vaccine allocation and stock level, vaccination number, the age of the vaccinated residents, their background, etc.
The authorities must make the data transparent to restore the people’s confidence in the vaccination plan and increase their willingness to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity in our country as soon as possible.