PETALING JAYA: Migrant workers, refugees, asylum seekers and foreign spouses should not be left out of the mass Covid-19 vaccination programme, says the Migrant Workers Right to Redress Coalition (MWR2R).
The coalition urged that as plans for the national Covid-19 vaccination exercise are being firmed up, the government should also make sure that the circumstances of every person are considered. This includes the situation facing documented workers, undocumented workers, workers in different sectors including domestic workers, all those within the refugee communities, foreign spouses, the stateless and others. Every effort needs to be made to ensure that all these people are able to access the vaccination programme and are not excluded on any basis, including by a possibility that they cannot afford it, said MWR2R in a virtual press conference on issues faced by migrant workers on Monday (Jan 25).
Three months to flatten the Covid-19 curve and other news you may have missed
Modified14 Jan 2021, 2:13 am
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1. Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said it could take 12 weeks to “flatten the curve” of new Covid-19 cases, but that could change after two weeks of the movement control order and reduce the daily cases to 1,000 per day after four weeks.
2. Amid questions regarding the efficacy of SinoVac’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate, Special Vaccine Supply Access Guarantee Committee co-chairperson Khairy Jamaluddin gave his assurance that Malaysia would not follow through with purchasing CoronaVac if it fails to meet the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency’s standards of efficacy and safety.
National plan: Securing vaccines for the population is a priority.
The MCO and even the just declared Emergency are only stopgap measures. What we need is a national vaccination plan that covers all bases.
SO a state of Emergency has been declared until Aug 1 to fight the Covid-19 pandemic that has become a deadly threat to the people’s health and the economy.
The King’s proclamation came just a day before we begin another round of movement control order in the federal territories and five states, my Selangor included, and conditional MCO for another six.
Declaring an Emergency may sound ominous and scary, especially to older Malaysians who remember it as a draconian measure used during the communist insurrection and May 13 race riots in 1969 – but this is not the case in 2021.