The Malaysian Insight

THE Perikatan Nasional (PN) government failed in preparing an adequate supply of Covid-19 vaccines for the people, said Anwar Ibrahim, who called this the administration’s biggest failure.

The PKR president also said Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s government was also confusing people with figures on the national vaccination drive.

“The biggest failure of the government has been the provision of adequate vaccines. 

“They have been making flamboyant statements, following political interests to try to, I don’t want to say cheating, but they are confusing the people because one day the figure is 75,000, 100,000 another day and then 200,000 another day, but it is all far from the projection.

“If this continues, it is unlikely that we will be able to solve the problem until the end of the year,” Anwar said at the opening of PKR’s 15th national congress, held online today. 

The government aimed to administer 200,000 doses of vaccines daily by next month, and achieved this for three days earlier this week, but shots given in the last two days have been below that mark.

In late May, Muhyiddin said Malaysia had to be 200,000 to 300,000 per day to achieve herd immunity by the end of the year.

Anwar said the government is also confusing people about the number of daily Covid-19 cases.

He said the number of tests done should also be reported clearly in connection with the daily figure on infections.

“I have mentioned this many times. The number of tests done relates to the number of positive cases. 

“We once hit 128,000 tests and screenings (at one stage) where the cases were around 9,000 and close to 10,000.

“But now the testing is reduced, so the cases will also reduce. This confusion does not help because data and science must be highlighted.”

Anwar also said the Covid-19 deaths reported daily were also a serious issue.

Using the deaths reported yesterday, Anwar said almost half of them victims were below the age of 60.

He added that the number of dead-on-arrival cases were serious, as well as the fact that more victims had no chronic illness or co-morbidities.

As of yesterday, a cumulative 5.67 million doses have been administered under the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme.

Of this, 4.08 million people or 12.5% of the population have received one shot, while 1.59 million people have received two shots.

The Special Committee on Ensuring Access to Covid-19 Vaccine Supply’s graphics does not state the percentage of the population that have received two doses but it works out to 4.86%. – June 20, 2021.