Selangor should expedite vaccine procurement to flatten COVID-19 curve - Experts

SHAH ALAM: Selangor has been making headlines lately for having the highest number of new COVID-19 cases with four figures recorded each day.

As of Feb 1, the state with a population of 6.7 million and about one million foreign workers has recorded almost 70,000 cumulative cases with 156 deaths, many of which were contributed by factories and workplace-related clusters.

To flatten the pandemic curve, the Selangor government has taken several measures including by implementing the 'Preventing Outbreak at Ignition Site' (POIS) programme in factories throughout the state and adding 50,000 more screening tests to trace positive individuals.

In fact, the state government also recommended to the federal government to shut down factories that have been hiding positive cases among their workers or reluctant to cooperate in close contact tracing.

Health experts described these measures, including POIS, as highly proactive but stressed on the need to speed up long-term solutions especially on vaccine procurement.

Public health medicine specialist, Prof Madya Dr Zaliha Ismail, said Selangor government should expedite its plan to purchase three to five million doses of vaccine for the people in the state.

She said although the effectiveness of the vaccine in preventing COVID-19 infection among communities has yet to be proven, this move would at least contain the pandemic from worsening.

"This is because patients have to take 21 days to complete two doses of the vaccine. Studies on vaccination are still not clear on whether it is able to prevent infection or reduce the severity of the disease," said Dr Zaliha who serves at Universiti Teknologi Mara's Medicine Faculty in Sungai Buloh Campus.

Echoing the sentiment was the virologist from Universiti Sains Malaysia, Prof Madya Dr Yahya Mat Arip, who urged the state government to speed up vaccine procurement especially for foreign workers with the cost to be borne by their employers.

He said this could at least reduce fear and worries among the public and foreign workers to work in communities since many positive cases were contributed by the manufacturing sector.

Commenting on POIS, Dr Yahya said it was a proactive measure taken by the Selangor government, and a similar programme has been implemented in Singapore in areas that could possibly create new clusters.

"That is why Singapore has high daily cases previously. With this screening, asymptomatic patients will be isolated or quarantined," he said.

Meanwhile, the Malaysian Public Health Physicians Association president Datuk Dr Zainal Ariffin Omar said the time has come for the Health Ministry to come up with new strategies to address COVID-19 in the country.

He said the new strategies could be drawn up with inputs from local health experts.

"Call these people to sit down together to review the existing data and formulate new strategies to reduce the number of COVID-19 cases," he said.

-- BERNAMA