PN govt - too many cooks or crooks spoil the broth

Left hand doesn't know what right hand is doing - Kit Siang jabs PN on herd immunity

Veteran DAP leader Lim Kit Siang has taken the Perikatan Nasional (PN) administration of Prime Minister Muhyiddin to task over its seeming inability to maintain a consistent narrative on important issues.

The Iskandar Puteri MP said that Malaysians have just been offered another instance of the right hand of the Muhyiddin government not knowing what the left hand is doing.

"The minister co-ordinating vaccines Khairy Jamaluddin said he had stopped using the term ‘herd immunity’ and he had advised the prime minister to be careful to use the term as looking at the data and the science, Covid-19 may very well be endemic and ‘we may see Covid-19 in a less threatening form, but it will stay with us for quite some time’.

"Either Khairy’s advice did not reach the prime minister, or the prime minister has rejected Khairy’s advice, for Muhyiddin has reiterated that Malaysia’s target to achieve herd immunity as projected by the National Recovery Plan can be completed as scheduled following the increase in the supply of Covid-19 vaccines by the country’s major suppliers," Lim said.

He said that Muhyiddin and Khairy should straighten out the issue of whether the country is going for herd immunity for vaccinating 80 percent of the population or not.

"How and when is this going to be achieved as 80 percent of the adult population above 18 years is only 63.8 percent of the Malaysian population," he questioned.

He asked when those above 12 years of age would begin to be vaccinated and he charged that the national vaccination rollout is still too low.

"For a start, the national immunisation campaign should set dates when those above 65 years and 60 years respectively can walk into any PPV centre and get Covid-19 vaccination without registration," said Lim, adding that this would encourage maximum vaccination of the population.

"We need acceleration of the national vaccination rollout, especially in view of deadly Covid-19 variants, to bring the vaccine to the people, especially in rural and remote areas, instead of bringing people to the vaccine by having more PPVs, mobile vaccination units and even house-to-house vaccination teams," he said.

Lim also called for an effective and efficient Find-Test-Trace-Isolate-Support (FTTIS) strategy and increased efficiency in testing.

He pointed out that at the current rate, Malaysia will by next week have more deaths than China, where the pandemic was first reported 18 months ago.

"China has a population of over 1.4 billion people or some 44 times Malaysia’s population of 32 million, but China’s toll from the Covid-19 pandemic stands at 4,636 deaths as compared to Malaysia’s 4,348 deaths," Lim added.