YOURSAY | ‘Why make vaccination so difficult? Why make it so inaccessible?’

Former minister alarmed at more 'mega' vaccination centres

PurpleMoose5046: Speed is of the essence. The rakyat’s lives matter.

Please use all existing resources and infrastructure available - our 7,000 private practitioner clinics, 1,000 government health clinics, district hospitals, state hospitals, private hospitals, local council halls and schools throughout Malaysia.

Please don’t go and create or rent unnecessary mega-malls, the World Trade Centre KL (WTC), Sunway Convention Centre, KLCC Convention Centre, or mega stadiums. It is a waste of taxpayer’s money.

All money saved should be channelled to buy more vaccines. Don’t be stubborn, Science, Technology, and Innovation Minister Khairy Jamaluddin, Health Minister Adham Baba, and Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin.

Malaysian1: Former minister Rafidah Aziz, thank you for stressing this point. Why the need for mega centres?

People will have to travel long distances to these centres to get vaccinated. These centres will be crowded with long wait, few places to park, and queues might be mixed up.

Don’t the organisers know we are facing a pandemic? Bring the centres closer to the people with smaller facilities so it will be less crowded and easier to control. It will involve less movement of people and easier parking. You don’t need a first-class degree or PhD to figure this out.

Wira: Private clinics can perhaps manage vaccines like Sinovac or AstraZeneca.

However, they should not be allowed to handle Pfizer as this vaccine requires low-temperature storage with strict rules of thawing those vaccines to room temperature with a short shelf life at room temperature, failing which they must be discarded.

Mano: “We don’t need apps that do not talk to one another. We need people to go to their doctors and have their jabs on the spot,” said Federation of Private Medical Practitioners’ Association Malaysia (FPMPAM) president Dr Steven Chow Kim Weng.

This cannot be more apt. Stop trying to use WTC, Sunway, etc. How much is the government paying these centres per day? Please tell us if any of the owners did national service and offered free usage of their venues.

We should use existing facilities. Every district has a government clinic. There are also many medical GPs around.

As for the Pfizer vaccine, before it is mixed, it can be kept in a normal fridge (2C to 8C) for up to 31 days. After mixing, it can be kept at room temperature for six hours. These statistics are from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Why so much red tape? Why make vaccination so difficult? Why make it so inaccessible?

WhiteCamel4278: Soon, there will be mega clusters due to the mega centres. All the local clinics can do a better job and at a faster rate than these mega centres, which take a lot of money and workforce to set up and manage.

All that money could have been diverted to help the B40 or M40 (bottom 40 percent and middle 40 percent of income earners).

MariKitaUbah: What's the use of using mega halls when people are made to wait for hours and hours? Don't forget, we have a hot climate.

Waiting for half an hour is long enough, imagine people waiting for two to five hours! Please plan properly instead of making people suffer. They have suffered enough!

Kawak: We should benchmark our vaccination programmes on those that run smoothly in other countries like the UK, China or US. Why can’t we do it right?

Mega vaccination centres allow the gathering of huge crowds while the Health Ministry and movement control order (MCO) standard operating procedures (SOPs) are strict on person-to-person contact.

This is absolutely absurd. This is akin to having a festival for vaccines!

ACR: Every other former and current MP wants to be in the limelight giving suggestions on effective vaccine rollout ostensibly to take advantage of the Perikatan Nasional (PN) government's lack of goodwill with the public.

If one bothers to review the US experience in late December 2020 and early January 2021, you would find they were in the exact circumstances as us now but more alarming given that they had vaccines, yet, the rollout was slow. Vaccines were sitting on hospital shelves. They enlisted GPs and pharmacies to administer vaccinations but each locality had its own logistical problems.

Mega vaccination centres allow for physical distancing and at the same time the logistics would be there to support the vaccination numbers planned.

The PN government was also criticised for not decentralising vaccine procurement. India did exactly this and a Lancet Commission had recommended centralising procurement.

Too many cooks spoil the broth. While bipartisanship should bring about better outcomes, not every donkey and its dog needs airtime.

Determined Sarawakian: It doesn't matter whether it's mega facilities, or private and public clinics. We need to send as many people as possible for vaccinations.

If not, we will never have herd immunity. For those mega facilities, make sure there's order and control.

Selangor’s Covid-19 testing was done efficiently, orderly, and promptly. Pakatan Harapan did a very good job.

All in all, from lining up outside the compound to finishing the test, it took me about 50 minutes. By the time I reached home, the Selangkah phone app already displayed my test result. This should be the way.

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