#kerajaangagal97 – Learn from China and the United States on how to bring vaccine to the people rather than bring people to the vaccine to accelerate and complete the Malaysian national vaccination rollout by Malaysia Day on Sept. 16, 2021

Malaysia must learn from China and the United States on how to accelerate and complete the national vaccination rollout by Malaysia Day on Sept. 16, 2012 by bringing vaccine to the people rather than people to the vaccine.

The Minister co-ordinating vaccines Khairy Jamaluddin has said that Malaysia breached its target of administering 150,000 daily Covid-19 vaccinations yesterday, comprising 105,722 for first doses and the remaining 45,587 receiving their second doses.

This is commendable but the national vaccination rollout is still too slow and tardy as only 3.5% of the population had been fully vaccinated and 7.7% of the population given one dose three-and-a-half months after the launch of the national immunization campaign in Malaysia.

Malaysia must learn from China and the United States on how to accelerate and complete the national vaccination rollout by Malaysia Day on Sept. 16, 2021.

In China, almost 800 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine had been administered for China’s 1.4 billion population at the present daily rate of some 19 million doses administered a day.

Around the world, about 2.2 billion doses had been given, which means that China’s 800 million doses represent more than a third of the global shots.

China’s vaccination programme got off to a slow start but has picked up pace, and China is now inoculating people more than six times as fast as the United States did at its mid-April peak.

In Beijing, almost 80% of those age 18 and over have received one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, bringing the Chinese capital close to the coveted goal of achieving herd immunity – but this is no surety that one is safe, as under the Covid-19 pandemic, no one is safe unless all are safe.

In the United States, President Biden has declared June a “national month of action” on the coronavirus pandemic, urging Americans to get vaccinated and emphasizing the proven safety of the shots.

Biden has set a goal of getting at least one shot into the arms of 70 per cent of the country’s adults by July Fourth.

As part of this effort, the White House unveiled an array of incentives, including free food delivery, baseball tickets, Xboxes and chances to win cruise tickets, groceries for a year and free airline tickets.

In China, different cities and institutions have also deployed different tactics including freebies to encourage vaccination.

The National Immunisation Programme (NIP) should be brave and creative to encourage maximum vaccination, as United Kingdom, which has one of the world’s highest vaccination rates, is a good example where its Covid-19 deaths have dropped to zero one day last week and to one new death case yesterday.

The NIP should create and invent news ways and methods in line with the principle to bring vaccine to the people rather than to bring the people to the vaccine to ensure the highest rate of vaccination against the coronavirus.

Lim Kit Siang MP for Iskandar Puteri