The full movement control order (MCO) may have reduced the infectivity rate and the daily number of Covid-19 cases, but it has yet to achieve the government’s target of below 4,000 daily infections for a seven-day average, said Health Minister Dr Adham Baba.
Adham said the country’s R-naught value has fallen below 1, standing at 0.96 nationwide today whereas the daily number of new Covid-19 cases has also decreased lately.
“This is related to the full MCO which was implemented on June 1. Despite being implemented for eight days, the number of Covid-19 cases is still high, with more than 5,000 cases reported a day.
“The new seven-day average, as of June 8, is 6,871 cases a day. This exceeds our target threshold that is a seven-day average of below 4,000,” he said at a press conference in Putrajaya today broadcasted online.
As such, even though there has been an "encouraging" decrease in the Covid-19 daily new cases and the infectivity rate, he still urged the public to abide by the usual precautions such as wearing a face mask in public and practising social distancing.
He was speaking at a weekly joint press conference with Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Khairy Jamaluddin on the progress of the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (NIP).
Meanwhile, Khairy addressed allegations that some companies were profiting from their on-site vaccination programmes.
He said the government had been discussing with various industries that it is open to a public-private partnership if the industries would like to facilitate the vaccination of their employees, as some of them have to operate during the MCO.
“What that means is that the government offers the vaccines for free as per our commitment under the NIP. Secondly, the industries will bear the cost of administering the vaccination.
“That will include payment made to the healthcare bodies organised via the ProtectHealth corporation which is a wholly-owned company of the Health Ministry.
“The administrative charges are for the rental of premises and other services. Now, this is where there is inconsistency in terms of additional charges,” Khairy explained.
The Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) is working with relevant agencies to set a "schedule of fair and reasonable charges" which Khairy said will be borne by the industries and companies participating in this programme.
“So this is above and beyond the charges that are paid to ProtectHealth to cover the private healthcare organisers,” he added.
Some letters had gone viral recently claiming several shopping malls were charging a RM50 nominal fee for the two doses of either Pfizer-BioNTech or Sinovac Covid-19 vaccines.
However, the Malaysia Shopping Mall Association (PPK) has since denied the allegations, saying that the malls had actually subsidised the cost of providing the venue, logistics, manpower and standby ambulance service for the on-site vaccination centre. - Mkini
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