PRIVATE general practitioners (GPs) and specialists should be listed as category one and receive the Covid-19 vaccine along with other healthcare front-liners, the Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) said.

Dentists, along with their staff, should also be included, MMA president Dr Subramaniam Muniandy said of the government’s guidelines on categorisation and listing of front-liners eligible for vaccination under phase one of the national immunisation plan.

“GPs are currently conducting mass and community Covid-19 screenings, which puts them at increased risk of infection.

“Dentists and their staff are also at risk to Covid-19 as patients seeing them will need to remove their masks to be examined and treated,” Subramaniam said in a statement today.

Placing them in category two shows they are not being recognised as an integral part of the mainstream healthcare system and will only delay efforts to bring the pandemic under control, he added.

“A number of GPs and their staff have been infected with Covid-19 from exposure to patients.

“It came to a point some clinics had to shut down for 14 days because the GP and their staff had to be quarantined,” he said.

Currently, under the guidelines, GPs, private specialist clinics and dentists are listed under category two of phase one along with defence and security forces, police personnel, primary and secondary school teachers and other essential services personnel.

Category one meanwhile, covers health workers under the Health Ministry, Defence Ministry, medical education institutions, and private hospitals.

Subramaniam urged the Special Committee on Covid-19 vaccine supply to review its categorisation of front-liners and list all healthcare workers who are directly exposed to Covid-19 risks under category one.

The government’s guidelines stipulating which front-liners are to receive the Covid-19 vaccine were released yesterday to prevent queue-jumping in the vaccination drive.

The guidelines are uploaded at www.vaksincovid.gov.my. – March 2, 2021.