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WE enthusiastically applaud Khairy Jamaluddin and fully support your call to “do this together”, and your encouraging statement that the vaccination programme will now include more sectors including plantation and retail.
We are relieved that the ramping-up of vaccination is gaining speed and momentum. We are further comforted that more than 18 million doses of vaccines will be delivered in July.
As the National Recovery Plan is predicated on achieving vaccination targets, it is extremely crucial that whatever vaccines are delivered should be administered as soon as possible so that our country can start the long and arduous route to reopening and recovery. Every day delayed further multiplies the difficulties and chance of recovery and even our very survival. Critically and most acutely now, time is of the utmost essence.
We thus would like to firmly plead that all preparations be made to ensure all the more than 18 million vaccines delivered in July will be administered in July. We firmly believe this can be achieved by mobilising all willing resources from private clinics to private sectors, like shopping malls and factories hosting vaccination centres for this purpose.
As vaccines will be provided free by the government, we sincerely recommend that all these private initiatives be given maximum cooperation to administer as many as possible upon demand. These free vaccines should not be diverted to initiatives that are commercially driven and which charge commercial rates.
With the current ramped-up deliveries and inoculations, we are confident the threshold of people having received their first dose will be exceeded to allow the economy to be reopened before July 15.
This can be achieved with concerted and urgent efforts. We cannot afford anymore to not reopen our economy as more and more countries have already done so. China, being the first to reopen, is reaping tremendous economic rewards with their exports exceeding even pre-Covid-19 levels. The later we reopen, the task of recovery gets exponentially more difficult, with the fear of being left behind in the momentum of recovery of all our trading partners.
However, we are totally perplexed and mystified by your statement that it is difficult to open vaccination centres in enhanced movement control order (EMCO) areas due to complications in supply delivery. There are several existing mega vaccination centres in EMCO areas and we believe delivery of vaccines have not been interrupted nor halted. The Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry is more than capable of adjusting vaccine supplies accordingly, whether the centres are in EMCO areas or not, and have been doing so since the beginning of the programme.
This EMCO period is the ideal time to expeditiously vaccinate as many people as possible so as to be protected when the lockdown is lifted.
Now that more than 18 million doses are being delivered, we need to mobilise all resources to utilise all the vaccines. It should be the nation’s target to ensure that all the more than 18 million doses are used within July itself, especially with the people anxiously clamouring and clambering for vaccination, and as all vaccine centres are already successfully practising standby candidates, ensuring spare vaccines are fruitfully used up. That should be the planned target. With sincere and proper planning and concerted efforts, this is definitely doable and achievable.
We earnestly look forward to this to be carried out with utmost efficiency under your firm direction. – The Vibes, July 7, 2021
Tan Sri Datuk Teo Chiang Kok is the president of the Malaysia Shopping Malls Association
