PRIVATE hospitals are willing to assist Putrajaya in its immunisation drive and can be mobilised quickly to complement the government’s efforts to ensure that the entire population is vaccinated to achieve herd immunity, said Dr Kuljit Singh.

The Association of Private Hospitals Malaysia president said Putrajaya should allow its members to buy their own supply of Covid-19 vaccines and administer them.

“We are happy to procure vaccines from different sources once there are approvals given by the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA).

“The reason the private hospitals strongly feel that some assistance should be given to the government as the current programme in three stages, which is expected to end in February 2022, is extremely long and not acceptable,” he said in a statement today.

Kuljit proposes that the private sector could donate the surcharge from every patient vaccinated at the private sector to the government’s fund to run the free public vaccination programme.

“We hope the private hospitals are not ignored in our plea to the government as our motives are not to gain profits but to help out as partners with the government. There is a huge demand from the public to get this working out soon.”

With the assistance of private hospitals, the government can expedite the vaccination plan.

The association yesterday submitted its proposal to Khairy Jamaluddin, the coordinating minister for the national Covid-19 immunisation programme.

“Every patient vaccinated in the private sector, is one patient less that the government has to pay for,” he said.

Private hospitals can be mobilised quickly to complement the government’s efforts to ensure that the entire population is vaccinated within a short period of time to achieve herd immunity.

“Association of Private Hospitals Malaysia also feels that the current vaccine strategy will translate into no choice of vaccine as it will be a logistical nightmare given the different storage conditions required for different vaccines,” he said.

The overall philosophy to achieve “herd immunity” is to encourage as many people as possible to get vaccinated within the shortest possible time.

The provision of choice of vaccine may encourage more people to get vaccinated and thus contribute to achieving herd immunity faster, he added.

APHM is also concerned about expatriates and diplomatic missions who may have a high probability of travelling in the near term. 

They will only be included in the third phase of the public vaccination programme while the private sector is willing to vaccinate them now.

“We are also in the opinion that in order to act as an impetus to restart the economy via business/leisure travel and also assist the hospitality industry, some form of vaccine passport system may have to be introduced soon.”

Kuljit said certain countries may approve a specific type of vaccine for visa approvals, which may not match the variants approved by Malaysia.

Therefore, he said with the demand for these specific vaccines, there will also be a need for infrastructure to manage them in Malaysia.

“An example here would be to restart haj/umrah pilgrimages whereby Saudi Arabia may only recognise specific vaccines for the visa applications,” he said.

Kuljit said the availability of different type vaccines at private hospitals will also curb queue jumping at government hospitals.

Khairy said yesterday the government will consider including the private sector later. – March 2, 2021.