Notes prepared for the interview:
Compared to many developed countries, Malaysia has started the vaccine rollout campaign relatively late on 24 February. By the end of May, only fewer than 5% of the adult population had full vaccination doses. But for the next 4 months, something incredible happened. Nearly 90% of the adult population received full doses, making Malaysia one of the fastest vaccinating nations in the world.
Why?
The slowness in the beginning was totally down to the global vaccine supply issue. Rich nations hoarded the vaccine supplies for their own, while the vaccine production line is still scaling up. world data documented this. Malaysia is a upper middle income, developing country with a modest population size of 33 million population, the country relies on vaccine import.
However, the Malaysian government seems to have anticipated the vaccine hoarding issue. They planned strategically from the beginning to diversify the COVID-19 vaccine portfolio. Initially, the government has included 5 types of vaccine in the portfolio for procurement, namely: Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca, Sinovac, Cansino and Sputnik V, which can cover up to 110% of the total population. Since then the government has added Johnson&Johnson, and increased coverage up to 130% of the total population. The Malaysian government also has made an arrangement with Sinovac working with the local pharmaceutical manufacturer Pharmaniaga to do the fill-and-finish bottles of Sinovac vaccine, this has created a good buffer for the vaccine supply during the vaccine rollout ramp up period between June and October, when Pfizer and AstraZeneca had issues with the promised delivery schedule of vaccines.
The government also already had in plan to set up plenty of mega vaccination administration centres throughout the country to speed up the vaccine rollout. These can administer multiple tens of thousands of vaccine jabs per day per centre, with the help of some private or NGO partners running the centres. At the peak, between 1 to 2 percent of the total population getting the vaccine jabs per day, this shows the speed and efficiency of the vaccine rollout. The government also made things easier for people to register their interest and willingness to get vaccinated for free. The registration can be made via a mobile app called MySejahtera, or official website or phone call.
The process of getting people registered and vaccinated was not that straightforward, only half of the adult population registered by the end of May. In fact, many had not been convinced, some were worrying about the side effects of the vaccines, and hence adopted the strategy of ‘wait-and-see’ first. The Ministry of Health’s April survey found that 5% of respondents refused to get vaccinated, 10% were unsure or hesitant.
What drove the vaccine rollout campaign between June and October, the biggest push factor is the worsening pandemic itself -- where Malaysians could see the rapid rise in new cases and then deaths, starting from May and peaking in August. The daily casualties number at the worst period was running at a few hundreds deaths per day, and more than 20 thousands new infection cases registered per day!
The government tried really hard to reach out to the population, for example, sending mobile units to the local communities to get the people vaccinated directly without prior registration or provide walk-in services starting from August.
Public communication is key. The minister in charge of the vaccine matters is the current Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin. He is the public face for the COVID-19 vaccine rollout campaign in Malaysia and he is a communicator par excellence. His competent and professional display of leadership and management give a lot of public confidence. This should be seen as a major pull factor that persuaded more people to get vaccinated. The numbers show for themselves: among the adult population, now 90% have completed vaccination, another 5% are currently partially vaccinated. That means it is only left with the remaining 5% either unable or unwilling to be vaccinated. It is close to the most optimistic scenario one could ever imagine back in February.
Now the state borders reopen for the fully vaccinated persons, the interstate travel restriction was finally lifted 2 days ago, which had been in force since January. The Prime Minister did promise for that to happen once the number of fully vaccinated adult population crosses the 90% mark.
What should we expect next?
More and more economic and social sectors are reopening including tourism activities; now adolescents are getting vaccinated, schools are prepared to reopen to all. Next year, Malaysians can look forward to getting the booster jab of COVID-19 vaccine, and the government will procure effective antiviral therapeutics to help fight the disease.
So, most likely the government will not revert to imposing more restrictions on movement or lockdown, unless the public healthcare is once again in crisis, which is far from happening at the moment.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Malaysia seems to be under control and
Malaysia has shown signs of improvement lately-- we can observe the number of
new cases keep falling in many states. If the downtrend persists, probably by
December Malaysia can move into the ‘endemic’ phase of COVID-19 management,
where people can get back to their daily routine under the ‘new normal’: there
are Standard Operating Procedures for them to observe.
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