‘A vaccine-fuelled economy’

KUALA LUMPUR: I can’t remember when was the last time, I looked forward to watching something live, and as Malaysia Airlines flight MH604, an Airbus 330-300 aircraft carrying the first batch of vaccines for Covid-19 touched down, there was a sense of relief and hope.

Feb 21, 2021 would go down in the country’s history on how the nation celebrated the arrival of the vaccine, having had its economy almost shattered and thousands of lives and livelihoods of people robbed.

Hence, the hype and around the clock planning for its arrival was without a doubt – befitting.

The jetliner was carrying 312,390 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for Malaysia under the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme, to run in phases starting this Feb 26.

The vaccine would help Malaysia to radically reduce the infection rate and the pressure on the healthcare system, which is currently overwhelmed with 34,468 active cases (as at noon on Feb 20, 2021).

The government aims to immunise 70 per cent of the population by the first quarter of 2022. Foreigners living in Malaysia would also receive the Covid-19 vaccine for free.

“This is the preventive part where you vaccinate people and as more people receive the vaccine, the less likely they are to get the disease; therefore achieving herd immunity,” said Dr Kalaiarasu Peariasamy, director of the Institute for Clinical Research at National Institutes for Health.

Once that is taken care of, then the need for lockdowns and movement controls would be less likely, which would enable the economy to go back to its full operation and eventually, make a steady recovery.

In its latest update, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) kept its seven per cent growth outlook for Malaysia this year, followed by Cambodia with 6.8 per cent, Vietnam (6.7 per cent), the Philippines (6.6 per cent), and Myanmar (5.7 per cent).

The government is projecting a growth rate of 6.5 to 7.5 per cent this year, while Bank Negara Malaysia is expected to announce its forecast in March, when it releases its Economic & Monetary Review 2020.

Malaysia’s economy shrank 3.4 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2020 with the Covid-19 resurgence, bringing the full-year contraction to 5.6 per cent.

The global economy is projected to grow 5.5 per cent this year, revised up by 0.3 percentage point relative to the previous forecast, reflecting expectations of a vaccine-powered strengthening of activity and additional policy support in few large economies.

The IMF, however, said although recent vaccine approvals had raised hopes of a pandemic turnaround later this year, renewed waves and new variants of the virus posted concerns of the outlook.

The cautiousness was something that the government was also aware of as Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah had said that vaccines served as a short-term solution to preventing Covid-19 spread.

“With the vaccines, we can prevent the disease in the short term, but for the long term, it needs to be studied further – perhaps for another two to three years. At least, we (those inoculated) would be protected from the disease for the next three to six months,” he said.

This is where the government’s policies and measures take up a pivotal role. In less than one year, the government has rolled out various stimulus measures totalling RM320 billion, coming in the forms of financial reliefs, aid, as well as policies to support growth and livelihoods.

Moreover, the government has been firm in assuring the people that it stands ready to step in when and if the situation warrants.

Hence, the optimism that the vaccine brings is not the solution to the long road to recovery, but additional shield for the economy.

The need to adhere to strict standard operating procedures (SOPs) and to normalise the new norms of physical distancing and facial masks, remains as key. — Bernama