Dr Lee Boon Chye said securing the supply of the vaccines was the “easy part” of the mass vaccination programme and that the real challenges lie in logistics and getting people to get vaccinated.
It has been reported that Malaysia has signed deals to procure the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine from the US, Russia’s Sputnik V, and the CoronaVac, produced by China’s Sinovac.
“Handling and fulfilling varying expectations is not easy, in the first phase all frontliners will get the vaccination.
“After that how do you prioritise? What if someone needs to get it because they want to travel for work or studies? What if someone with existing health problems wants the vaccines despite the risk?
“And what about foreign workers? Do we vaccinate them early or later? There are a lot of cases among foreign workers.”
Lee, who is MP for Gopeng, said there are so many scenarios that need to be discussed and communicated early as these issues will arise once the vaccines are available.
Lee said he hoped the vaccination programme will not suffer the same communications problems as suffered by the government in implementing the movement control order.
“The MCO 2.0 is an example of improper planning, the SOPs (standard operating procedures) are confusing and ever-changing.”
He said the people must be aware from early on who will get the vaccine and when, where they can get it, how do they register or get more information on it, and who cannot or should not be vaccinated.
“The government must also counter the propaganda against vaccination.”
Klang MP Charles Santiago said greater clarity was needed on the vaccination rollout and that Putrajaya has not done a good enough job in educating people.
“You need to get a herd size which will take some time and we have around 3.5 million undocumented workers in the country. Will they get vaccinated together with documented migrant workers? How do you reach a herd size when there is no clarity on migrant workers’ vaccination?” he said.
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