Parents urged to register children for vaccination
KOTA KINABALU: Kota Kinabalu Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KKCCCI) president Datuk Michael Lui has implored parents to take seriously the 160 per cent increase in Covid-19 cases among children under the age of 11 over the past week.
He said the reopening of schools has increased the chances of interaction among pupils, leading to the rising number of positive cases involving children, but the response towards the Covid-19 National Immunization Program for Children (PICKids) remained lukewarm.
Hence, he urged parents to heed Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin’s call to get their children vaccinated as soon as possible to curb the spread and severity of the virus.
Lui warned the people not to take the fast-spreading Omicron variant lightly. New Covid-19 cases in Sabah hit another record high of 5,565 on Friday, which the daily cases in Malaysia has exceeded 20,000.
With the pandemic becoming more complex, he said the Health Ministry must be proactive in preventing import cases and curb local transmissions to stop the situation from worsening in Malaysia.
At the same time, he said the people must strictly comply with the standard operating procedures (SOPs) to break the chain of infection.
Lui said the number of infected children was on the rise, yet the percentage who registered or have received their first dose of vaccine out of the 411,400 eligible children below 12 years old in Sabah remained low.
He said the strategy undertaken by the government in rolling out the immunization programme among adults and subsequently to teenagers aged 12 to 17 and children aged five to 11 was on the right track.
“The vaccines have proven to be effective in lessening the effect of Omicron on adults, teenagers and children.”
He pointed out that some parents had reservations about the side effects of Covid-19 vaccine on their children.
As such, he suggested the Health Ministry to launch awareness campaign with proven medical studies that showed that the vaccines were effective in reducing the severity and mortality of Covid-19.
“The Health Ministry should address parents’ concern through medical data and prove to parents that the vaccines are safe with science-based statistics.”
Lui said unvaccinated children were among the reasons contributing to the increasing number of school clusters.
“There is a pressing need to intensify vaccination among children to stop the pandemic from worsening.
“KKCCCI urges parents and guardians to register their children between the age of five and 11 for PICKids as soon as possible for their health and safety.”