LETTERS: The Covid-19 National Immunisation Programme (NIP) has been divided into three phases.
Phase 1 is for healthcare workers and frontliners, Phase 2 for high-risk groups (older persons and those with comorbidities), and Phase 3 for adults aged 18 and above who are not included in Phases 1 and 2.
With the rapid spread of Covid-19 and workplaces being the largest clusters, the government decided to group workers in essential economic sectors under Phase 4 and vaccinate them earlier.
Now, there is another group (Phase 5) comprising children and teenagers aged 12 to 17 who are eligible for vaccination. Research findings show that it is safe to vaccinate this group.
Including children in the NIP will enable a coverage of 80 per cent as adults aged 18 years and above only make up 70 per cent of the population.
Up to June 8, only 20 per cent of the 9.4 million high-risk individuals in Phase 2 had received at least one vaccine dose, and only 38 per cent of older persons who registered for the NIP had been vaccinated.
Meanwhile, the government started Phase 4 of the vaccination programme for economic frontliners on June 16. It was also announced that students sitting Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia and Sijil Tinggi Persekolahan Malaysia would be inoculated starting next month as they have to return to schools for the exams.
All these groups are justified to be vaccinated. However, the priority or timing of the vaccine administration should be risk-based.
Those in the high-risk groups should be prioritised. This is to protect them from being infected and to prevent them from having severe symptoms and increasing the rates of hospitalisation or death.
If teachers are fully immunised and all other adults (in Phase 3) are protected, the risk of infection among students will be greatly reduced.
In general, children without pre-existing medical conditions present milder symptoms but the only concern is that they may spread the virus among the high-risk groups.
Immunising students sitting exams as early as next month will reduce or divert the resources in getting the high-risk groups and economic frontliners immunised.
But why only inoculate students sitting national exams? What about those sitting O and A level exams?
What about university students getting training in medicine, dentistry or nursing? Are they not at higher risk of being infected? They get training in hospitals and clinics, and may have direct contact with Covid-19 patients.
They may also be a source of infection to patients that they come in contact with. The Higher Education Ministry has agreed to provide vaccination to medical students, but nobody from the private medical schools or departments has been given appointments.
Besides providing daily reports on the number of registration and vaccine doses administered according to states, the goverment should also publish data on the percentages of older persons and high-risk groups being vaccinated.
The decision to start vaccination for other groups should be based on the coverage of the high-risk groups.
If the vulnerable group is found to be lagging in terms of vaccination rates, more efforts should be taken to get them inoculated. The prioritisation of Covid-19 vaccination should be risk-based.
PROFESSOR DR MOY FOONG MING
Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Malaya
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times