MEF urges employers to help achieve herd immunity sooner, recommends initiatives like time off work for vaccination

KUALA LUMPUR (June 8): The Malaysian Employers Federation (MEF) urged employers to take a more active role in aiding the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (NIP), to achieve herd immunity as soon as possible.

In a statement today, MEF president Datuk Dr Syed Hussain Syed Husman said employers should brief their employees on the importance of vaccination and help them register, especially those at the lower levels of employment who may find it difficult to use the MySejahtera app.

“Besides providing time off to employees to undergo vaccination, employers are also encouraged to set up a help desk at the workplace to educate the employees, so that the message on the importance of Covid-19 vaccinations would be passed on to their families and friends.

“This simple effort would complement the NIP, which could allow herd immunity to be achieved in a shorter period of time,” he added.

According to the statement, as at June 2, the NIP reported that 12.58 million (51.9%) of the adult population had registered for vaccination while the total vaccines administered was 3.21 million doses — 2.1 million people had received one dose and 1.11 million completed two doses.

“It is understood that to attain the desired herd immunity, a total of 25 million (80%) of the adult population were targeted to be inoculated by year-end.

“Malaysia needs at least another 12 million people to sign up and be vaccinated against Covid-19 to attain herd immunity, while the attendance rate among those who have registered was about 80% on average.

“Both registration and average attendance rates indicate that vaccine hesitancy remains an issue,” MEF asserted.

Given this, Dr Syed Hussain stated that employers can encourage better communication among their families and friends, and also help educate people who still have doubts and fears about the vaccine.

The MEF president relayed his appreciation for the government’s efforts in securing the vaccines for the people of Malaysia but stressed that the government should be clear and consistent in regards to the communication of standard operating procedure (SOP) and Covid-19 vaccinations.

He added there should not be ad hoc changes on implementation of guidelines and SOP that creates confusion to the employers, employees and the people.

“If the confusion and inconsistencies persist then the public may lose confidence in the movement control order (MCO) regulations prescribed to them.

“Moving forward, we hope all communications would have been discussed intra-agencies and departments and the execution is tested before roll-out,” said Dr Syed Hussain.

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