By Lim Kit Siang
MALAYSIANS commend the country’s health workers for reaching the target of 500,000 daily COVID-19 vaccinations yesterday, following the announcement that 507,750 COVID-19 vaccinations were given out on July 22.
This is the only good news so far from the very depressing development of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the country on the tenth consecutive day with five-digit numbers for daily new COVID-19 cases while deaths and suicides mount to unprecedented numbers.
When Emergency was declared on Jan 11, there were 2,433 new COVID-19 cases and four COVID-19 deaths on by Jan 10 – but yesterday, there were 15,573 cases and 144 deaths!
Despite the good news on the vaccination front, only 15% of people in Malaysia have been fully vaccinated with two doses of vaccine and some 33% of people have been given one dose of vaccine after four months of the national vaccination rollout.
We must step up the momentum and even raise the vaccination target to one million doses a day to save Malaysians from the heavy toll of high number of deaths from the ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’.
Then Malaysians have something to celebrate for its 64th National Day on Aug 31 and the 58th Malaysia Day on Sept 16.
This is because from the present rate of infections, Malaysia is heading towards a gloomy period with a cumulative of over 1.3 million COVID-19 cases and over 11,000 deaths on Aug 31, along with over 1.5 million cases and over 13,000 deaths on Sept 16.
In fact, if we can achieve the million doses of vaccine a day in the month of August, we might obviate the most despondent and depressing development of COVID-19 pandemic on Sept 16.
But a word of caution – vaccine is not the silver bullet to end all problems of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Brazil and Spain have higher vaccination rates than Malaysia, both for one or two doses of vaccine, but both have higher daily new COVID-19 infection cases than Malaysia. – July 24, 2021
Lim Kit Siang is a DAP MP for Iskandar Puteri.
The views expressed are solely of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Focus Malaysia.
