By Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye<\/p>\n
KOTA KINABALU: The Government and all Malaysians can give themselves a pat on the back for achieving a high level of success in our Covid-19 vaccination efforts.<\/p>\n
By global standards, we started late but we have now overtaken many other countries in our road to achieving herd immunity.<\/p>\n
According to the latest reports, nearly 80 percent of the adult population has been fully vaccinated, and 93.1 per cent have received at least one dose.<\/p>\n
Altogether a total of nearly 41 million doses have been administered.<\/p>\n
This is indeed a commendable effort, even given the fact that there has been no let up in the negative messages on vaccination being spread by anti-vaxxers.<\/p>\n
But having reached a comfortable level of protection against the effects of Covid-19 virus, we cannot be complacent.<\/p>\n
Our biggest challenge now is not to let our guard down. We must continue to strictly follow the basic SOPs\u2014washing hands, wearing masks, and physical distancing.<\/p>\n
With the relaxation to travel and recreational restrictions, we are seeing a deluge of people heading for picnic spots near waterfalls, rivers and beaches, but they have not been following all the SOPs. Whatever has happened to physical distancing?<\/p>\n
The Government must keep reminding them of the grave risks that still exist..<\/p>\n
It is also important for employers to enforce all SOPs in their premises and instill self-discipline in their workers to be ever-vigilant against lapses among themselves or their customers.\u2019<\/p>\n
Some risks also face some sections of the fully-vaccinated population, especially senior citizens with comorbidities, and for which the Government is now thinking of a third dose for them.<\/p>\n
In this respect, it is important to plan well and take clear-cut decisions on who will be required to take their booster doses, and when. The sooner such details are decided upon and circulated, the better.<\/p>\n
There is also the question of which type of vaccine to be used for the third dose.<\/p>\n
Parallel to addressing these issues, the Government must give top priority to supporting the Institute of Medical Research (IMR) to come up with our own vaccines in double quick time.<\/p>\n
CHAIRMAN,
\n ALLIANCE FOR SAFE COMMUNITY.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye KOTA KINABALU: The Government and all Malaysians can give themselves a pat on the back for achieving a high level of success in our Covid-19 vaccination efforts. By global standards, we started late but we have now overtaken many other countries in our road to achieving herd immunity. According […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":6852,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6851","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sudut-pendapat"},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6851"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6853,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6851\/revisions\/6853"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jesseltontimes.com\/wpmarch2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}