By Sheeda Fathil
SHAH ALAM, Feb 23 — High-risk workers in Selangor will be among the earliest groups to receive the Covid-19 vaccine that are purchased by their employers via the state government.
State executive councillor for public health Dr Siti Mariah Mahmud said the move was due to their high-risk status, including foreign workers, following the spike in Covid-19 cases in workplaces.
“Selangor has more than 500,000 foreign workers, if left unchecked we worry that the number of cases will increase. Therefore, employers need to buy the vaccines from the state government and get their workers vaccinated,” she said after distributing the Covid-19 sanitisation kit here today.
Dr Siti Mariah added that almost 70 per cent of the state’s 6.7 million residents are to be vaccinated.
As one of the leading industrial state in the country, Selangor has a high number of factories and construction sites, which saw the detection of new Covid-19 clusters in the third wave of the outbreak.
The state government had then introduced the Preventing Outbreak at Ignition Site (POIS) programme this month which includes Covid-19 screening operations in factories and workplaces to control the new clusters.
Yesterday, Selangor Menteri Besar Dato’ Seri Amirudin Shari said the purchase of the two to five million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine by the state government is expected to be received in May or June.
He said the move was to meet the needs of locals and foreign workers as well as reduce the burden of the Federal government.
