KUCHING: The Federal government should increase the public healthcare and genomic surveillance capacity and ramp up COVID-19 vaccination exponentially in order to proactively deal with the Omicron threat.
Bandar Kuching MP Dr Kelvin Yii said this is to ensure there would not be an uncontrollable surge to overwhelm the country’s health system again and cause unnecessary deaths.
“Based on reports from the Ministry of Health (MoH), there are currently 245 cases detected in Malaysia, with 12 cases of local transmission, and seven cases reported on Jan 6, 2022, in Sarawak alone.
“This is, of course, a cause for concern as this may be just a tip of the iceberg due to the lack of genomic surveillance in our country as we are not sequencing every single case here in Malaysia,” he said in a Facebook post on Friday (Jan 7).
While many reports have said that the severity of the Omicron variant may be milder, he stressed that its impact should not be underestimated, and the people must not let their guard down but maintain their preparedness in fighting the pandemic.
“While Omicron does appear to be less severe compared to Delta, especially among those vaccinated, it does not mean it should be categorised as mild.
“So, in my view, if not properly handled, a full-blown Omicron wave in Malaysia where we will see a vertical surge of cases like in other countries, maybe even more damaging than the Delta variant.
“We cannot just look at the severity of damage it causes to an individual, but more importantly we also need to consider its impact on the healthcare system,” he stressed.
When patient volume increases, he said, inevitably the high-risk portion will require closer medical attention or hospitalisation which will then swamp the healthcare system again, which could inevitably result in sub-optimum care due to lack of manpower or even medical equipment, affecting the prognosis of a patient.
“This variant also increases the risk for healthcare workers to be infected causing the loss of manpower on the ground either from isolation, quarantine or hospitalisation,” he said.
He added a booster dose campaign must be launched to exponentially increase the booster dose uptake to ensure the most vulnerable are getting the most optimum protection. Currently, just 43 per cent of those aged 60 years and above or 20 per cent of the total population are boosted against COVID-19 in Malaysia.
“That is why the government must also improve their risk communication and allay the concerns of those still hesitant to take the vaccine or even take the booster dose due to the mixing vaccine (heterologous vaccination),” he stressed.
He also said that the government must improve the rollout of boosters as many turn up at the vaccination centres (PPVs) to receive their dose, but due to lack of manpower and government assistance, many of these PPVs were often congested and people have to queue up for long hours even under the sun.
“That is why I urge the Ministry of Health to really step in and increase capacity to fasten the rollout process of booster dose especially in view of the threat of Omicron.
“Currently there are about only 1,500 general practitioners involved out of more than 7,000 that are registered. That is why more can be done to incentivise more GPs to be part of the rollout as well as set up more PPVs assisted by the MoH just like how it was done before for the first two doses.
“New variants like Omicron are a reminder that the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over and that is why we must remain vigilant and not remain complacent,” said Dr Yii.
