Tunnel Vision & Roadblocks: Hindrance to The National Immunisation Plan and Recovery
Malaysia’s COVID-19 National Immunisation Plan has been providing over 200,0001 (average) COVID-19 jabs every single day. Today this has been halted. The 113 vaccination centres in Kuala Lumpur2 have been relatively empty since morning, and will face a backlog in the upcoming days to pick-up the unavoidable road closures that have limited movement to vaccination centres in the heart of KL. The roadblocks are currently set-up to avoid any political uprising in the form of protests and assemblies - even though activists had cancelled them as of early Wednesday ensuing the resignation of Malaysia’s 8th Prime Minister3.
Perhaps fuelled by fear of an uprising coinciding with the swearing in of Malaysia’s 9th Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob scheduled for 2:30 pm has led to the roadblocks being set-up regardless as a symbol for deterrence. This has made it a challenge for those wanting to obtain their vaccinations today from Kuala Lumpur. The Klang Valley’s two larger vaccination centres PWTC and KLCC were deserted during midday as many individuals were unable to find access into the city centre with the blockade of over 88 different roads into the city centre cordoned off to the public from 9:00 am3.
Even if these protests were to unexpectedly arise, would the trade-off of obstructing at least 40-70% of individuals be worth it? Expecting 2-3 hour delays + overworking volunteers at the PPVs + rescheduling + individuals being turned away after having scheduled their vaccinations for months. Curbing potential protests at the cost of hindering vaccination plans for the 21st of August - do the weigh-offs make sense? More so, when our 7-day rolling average of cases is at an all-time high above 20,000 cases, and vaccinations are our only hope.
The Greater Klang Valley provides over 9 million jobs4 that make up half of the active labour force of the country5. A healthy number of working individuals live in the outskirts and travel daily to the city centre. The obstruction of individuals attempting to get vaccinations, along with those heading into work paralyses the movement to continue vaccinations as planned with unexpected traffic, and slows down our main priority as a country; achieving immunisation across the board.
On top of this, many SMEs that are still surviving in Kuala Lumpur are hanging by a thread, even one day of loss of income (which is evidently happening) could lead to permanent closure as many have already done. The inability to communicate effectively, with inefficient measures backfiring on the single tool we have against COVID-19 will be our biggest failure.
The first five prime minister’s of Malaysia served for 51 years from 1957 - 20096. The next four have only been in power for 12 years, with a prospective tenth one likely to be sworn in sooner given the growing tensions (the last two Prime Minister’s along with their cabinets not being elected by the people), and a natural election cycle most likely to take place in 2022/2023. What is worrying is the most recent 4 year period from 2018 - 2021, we’ve had four different Prime Ministers during this span, averaging a year each. All four leaders have had a different set of strategies, focuses, and attempts to hold on to the harness of the carriage they step into - the larger government body. The entire system seems to be in a limbo of scraping past policies, taking on new paths and spending exorbitant amounts of money.
We messed up by not taking preventive steps with the Tabligh cluster. It was early, and new for everyone, information was limited - fine.
We messed up with the Sabah elections - cases were low and there was hope to try pursuing democratic elections.
We messed up with the opening of free flow Bazar's that led us to our current predicament - this may have been necessary to retain the sanity of many during Ramadan, sure.
Please don’t let the vaccination efforts mess up at any cost - this will be inexcusable.
Sources
2 https://www.vaksincovid.gov.my/en/statistics-state/?WP%20KUALA%20LUMPUR
3 https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/588076
5 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.TOTL.IN?locations=MY