The Malaysian Society for Occupational Safety and Health highlights increasing Covid-19 cases in Penang, Perak, Pahang, Terengganu, Kelantan, and Sabah, amid poor vaccination coverage.
Malaysia’s 21% vaccine breakthrough infection rate (including among partially inoculated people) is much higher than the UK (12.5%) and US (0.2%-5.9%) among the fully vaccinated.
The government must ramp up vaccination to provide adequate coverage in all states to hasten the rebooting of the economy and transition to the new normal of living with Covid-19 as an endemic.
Prof Dr Adeeba Kamarulzaman highlights potentially worse Covid-19 outbreaks in states with less health care resources than the Klang Valley, such as Johor, Kedah, Penang and Terengganu with fast rising cases.
Just more than a third of Malaysia’s adult population are double vaccinated against Covid-19 as of August 7, amid wide vaccination disparity between states.
Sarawak has fully vaccinated more than half of its total population, while Penang, Terengganu, Pahang, Kedah, Kelantan, Johor, and Sabah have not even reached 20%.
Malaysia is also on track to vaccinate 100% of adults nationwide with their first Covid-19 vaccine dose by Sept 6 and complete inoculation by Oct 11 at the earliest.