EMBATTLED Penang executive councillor in charge of health Dr Norlela Ariffin, who has come under fire for the surge in Covid-19 cases in the state, has hit out at her detractors, saying it is the responsibility of everyone in the state government to bring the epidemic under control.

She said it is unfair to blame her alone for the increase in infections and the shortage of vaccines.

Norlela said everyone in the Penang government, including the Pakatan Harapan (PH) backbenchers, should be involved in containing the epidemic in the state.

The Penanti assemblyman said the main issue is the shortage of vaccines, which are provided by the federal government, and it is not due to her not trying to get more.

She reiterated that attempts to get the vaccine supply should not be the sole responsibility of the health exco, instead all state assemblymen should chip in.

“The sultan of Selangor pointed out that the state didn’t receive enough vaccine supply per population ratio and it was immediately rectified. The same for Johor. Here, I can shout until my face turns blue, but it is ultimately not my call,” Norlela told The Malaysian Insight.

“(They too should speak up) rather than criticising and demoralising people who are making the best of a horrible situation.”

Norlela was appointed as the state agriculture and agro-based industry, rural development and health executive councillor in March last year, making her the first woman leader from PKR to hold the state exco post.

She has been criticised for not doing enough to ensure that Penang has enough supply of Covid-19 vaccines when the number of infections shot up last month.

Former Penang chief minister Lim Guan Eng also commented that the state should not follow the federal government but instead come up with its own mitigation efforts to tackle Covid-19.

The issue was also raised at the recent state assembly meeting when assemblymen from PH blamed Norlela for not handling the Covid-19 situation well.

“I don’t have the power to decide how many vaccine doses we (Penang) get. If people like Lim want to say I was not able to complete the state’s vaccination in August, it’s true, but I don’t have the power (to control vaccine supply),” she said.

“The vaccines fall under the purview of the Health Ministry, the minister and the federal government. We are not the people who have the authority over health. I can only request on behalf of the people of Penang and the state.”

She said the shortage of vaccines means that the state is unable to administer first doses and instead has to focus on giving second shots as this cannot be delayed.

“If not for the short supply of vaccines to Penang in August, we would have vaccinated 100% of the state’s adult population that month. We tried our best, but everything boils down to the number of vaccine doses we got,” she said.

“We were supposed to get two million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in August, but we only received about 917,000 doses.

“A large portion of this was used for second doses, so we couldn’t vaccinate more people.”

Although Penang had a capacity of giving out 40,000 shots a day at the time, it was only able to vaccinate 10,000 people with the first dose and 20,000 with second dose, she said.

Covid-19 infections in the state rose from three figures on August 2 to a record high of 2,078 cases on August 26.

The Health Ministry, through genome sequencing, also discovered that the state had 31 Delta cases from August 16 to 29.

Up to September 20, Penang has fully vaccinated 75.3% of its adult population while 94.6% of the adults have received one dose of a vaccine.

To make up for the shortage of vaccines in the state, Norlela had to appeal to her counterpart in Selangor.

The PH-run state donated 20,000 doses of Sinovac vaccine on August 30 and another 200,000 of surplus Sinovac vaccine was delivered to Penang on September 3.

New problems

Just as Norlela and the state have managed to overcome the vaccine supply problem, they are faced with new issues.

Norlela said the state is now facing a shortage of vaccine recipients.

Apart from that, a large number of people who have been vaccinated at private clinics and hospitals do not have their status reflected on the MySejahtera app.

This situation makes it difficult to track those who have not been inoculated, Norlela said.

“Only 50% of those given appointments through MySejahtera showed up for jabs. Then, we found out that many have already been vaccinated by the time they got their appointments via MySejahtera,” she said.

“Now we are looking for those who did not register for the vaccine and the anti-vaxxers.”

Although the vaccination rate in the state has gone up in recent weeks, the number of infections still hovers around 1,000 daily.

Yesterday, the state reported 1,224 cases.

“There is no way to completely eliminate the infections. Our goal now is to ensure that there are only 1.7-2% of patients in more severe categories 3 to 5. We also want to bring down the number of dead-on-arrival cases,” said Norlela.

“It is also important to monitor categories 1 and 2 patients so that they don’t develop more severe symptoms as this will overwhelm the healthcare system.”

She said the number of daily cases will eventually come down as the effect of vaccines kicks in.

“We have one to two months to see the effect of the vaccines. Even in Sarawak, which has received so many vaccine doses, its cases are high too, but those who are in a critical state are not many.”

Workplace and sporadic infections still account for the highest number of cases in the state.

“For workplace clusters, the cases originated from the workers’ dormitories. We realise that workers from multiple factories share the same dormitory and this is where the infection starts. These are mostly migrant workers,” said Norlela.

“The Malaysian workers who mingle with them also catch the virus and pass it on to their families, leading to more infections in the communities.” – September 23, 2021.