COVOD-19 | Ensuring migrants have equal access to the Covid-19 vaccine is crucial to gain control of the coronavirus, despite calls to have non-citizens pay for them or sideline them all together, experts said.

Dr Ahmad Faizal Mohd Perdaus, president of Mercy Malaysia, said scientific evidence, and not public sentiment, should dictate public health measures.

“Public health wisdom dictates we have to ensure as many people as possible… get immunised, get vaccinated so that we can have herd immunity, which will then hopefully come into effect and break the chain of transmission once and for all.

“That is the public health wisdom, and that is the logic and the science,” he said, adding that no one group has natural immunity to the sometimes-deadly virus.

In February, Malaysia announced that foreigners, including undocumented workers and refugees, would be eligible for the Covid-19 vaccine free of...