KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 5 (Bernama ) — The Special Vaccine Supply Access Guarantee Committee (JKJAV) will discuss whether to vaccinate foreign workers and expatriates for free to effectively curb COVID-19 outbreaks.
JKJAV co-chairman Khairy Jamaluddin said the cabinet has asked the committee to make a recommendation on the matter in a couple of weeks.
Khairy who is also the Science, Technology, and Innovation Minister said the discussion will involve the Home Ministry, Human Resource Ministry and Foreign Ministry.
“The principle is very simple, we need to vaccinate foreign workers to make sure they are safe to make sure we are also safe.
“The more people get vaccinated, the safer we are, if we were to only vaccinate Malaysians without vaccinating foreigners, it is still at waste because we will not achieve herd immunity,” he said in a press conference here Tuesday.
Khairy said the measures were important to encourage employers to ensure their employees get vaccinated while achieving the goal of vaccinating as many as they could.
Khairy said the government has identified 55 locations, namely in urban areas, to store Pfizer vaccine that requires ultra-low temperature freezers.
Commenting on the National Vaccination Plan which would be finalised this Thursday and scheduled to start in February, he said it would be presented to Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin next Monday before being presented to the Cabinet on Wednesday.
“We will start with risk assessment, who is at high risk, and we will start with that group, that will be announced after the Cabinet approves the plan,” he said.
Khairy added that Malaysians could get access to the vaccine by registering themselves via the MySejahtera application after the plan was approved.
“It’s voluntary, so if you want to get vaccinated, you have to sign up. We’ll have a sign up feature at MySejahtera where you can sign up to say that you consented and that you registered to get vaccinated,” he said.
— BERNAMA
