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PUTRAJAYA – Only three Malaysian states, Selangor, Johor and Penang, as well as the federal capital Kuala Lumpur will remain in a partial lockdown from Friday (February 19), just days before the country receives its first batch of Covid vaccines. -19. Restrictions in the rest of the country will be eased.
Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin announced at the vaccination plan guide launch on Tuesday (February 16) that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines would arrive on Sunday, ahead of the scheduled February 26 launch of the National Covid-19 Immunization Program. .
Tan Sri Muhyiddin will be the first to be inoculated against the virus, followed by around 500,000 people working on the front lines of the Covid-19 battle, most of them healthcare workers. The others include welfare officials, security personnel, and elected representatives.
“Among those who have close contact with the public are state deputies and assembly members. Whether they are with the government or with the opposition, they will be vaccinated in the first phase, ”Muhyiddin said after the launch.
The first phase will end in April and the vaccines will be made available to 9.4 million people in high-risk groups, such as those with certain diseases, those over 65 and other medical professionals.
The rest of adults residing in Malaysia, including foreign workers, will be eligible for vaccination between May and February.
Malaysia previously said it had obtained enough vaccines to cover almost all of its 33 million people. The goal is to vaccinate 80 percent of all adults by the end of the year or by February of the next year at the latest.
The first batch of vaccines arriving Sunday will contain 312,390 doses. Each individual needs two doses. Malaysia has obtained 12.8 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech.
Chief Security Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob announced on Tuesday that, following a recent downward trend in cases, the Movement Control Order (MCO) will remain only in Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Johor, and the rest of the country will move to -level conditional motion control order.
Perlis, the smallest state, will be included in the recovery MCO, in which almost the entire economy will be able to reopen.
The MCO will be in effect until March 4, because virus cases have remained high in the three states and the capital, which are the four largest economies in the country and are home to more than a third of the population.
Datuk Seri Ismail Sabri said that specific protocols related to different levels of lockdown will be released on Thursday.
Malaysia’s second iteration of the MCO, rolled out on January 13, is a much more relaxed version of the first order rolled out for three months last year during the second wave of coronavirus infections.
While the first MCO saw an almost total lockdown of the country, except for essential services, the current MCO, called MCO 2.0, allows different sectors of the economy to progressively reopen.
MCO 2.0 initially showed no results, as the number of cases continued to rise, reaching an all-time high of 5,728 per day on January 30.
However, that number has started to decline in the past week.
Malaysia recorded 2,176 cases on Monday, the lowest daily case count since January 11. The Health Ministry also said that the virus’s infectivity rate had fallen below 1.0, although it is still a bit far from the target rate of 0.6 or less.
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