KUALA LUMPUR, June 7 — DAP veteran Lim Kit Siang has issued a challenge for Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba to commit to reaching Malaysia’s target of vaccinating 80 per cent of its population against Covid-19 by September 16.

The Iskandar Puteri MP said he has been proposing Malaysia Day as a target to achieve the vaccination goal of the National Covid-19 Immunisation Plan.

"I had asked whether Malaysia is heading towards a situation where there would be more daily Covid-19 deaths in Malaysia than in the United States,” Lim said in a statement.

Noting that the fatalities from Covid-19 in the US had fallen by 96.5 per cent from a peak of 4,462 deaths on January 12 to 158 deaths yesterday, he said Dr Adham should ensure that this state of affairs does not materialise, where the daily number of Covid-19 deaths is more in Malaysia than in the US.

"In Johor Baru yesterday, Dr Adham said the United Kingdom’s success in recording zero death from Covid-19 recently has given the Malaysian government confidence in the effectiveness of the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme.

"But for the past one week, the UK has reduced daily Covid-19 fatalities to lower double-digit or single-digit figures with one day with zero death, yet Malaysia achieved a new record of daily fatalities with 126 deaths on June 2,” Lim said.

Adding that Malaysia is far behind the UK when it comes to vaccination, he said the latter has administered about 68 million doses to date, but Malaysia has administered less than 3.5 million doses.

"As a result in the UK, 41.4 per cent of the population has been fully vaccinated and 60.4 per cent of the population has been given one dose of the vaccine.

"This is compared to Malaysia, where only 3.5 per cent of the population had been vaccinated while 7.3 per cent of the population had been given one dose of vaccine,” Lim said.

It is estimated that over 2.12 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been administered across 176 countries, at the latest rate of approximately 38.9 million doses a day.

"If we are to compare Malaysia with the UK, there needs to be two conditions. Firstly the Covid-19 death rate in Malaysia must come down sharply and secondly, the national vaccination rollout must be greatly accelerated.

"According to an article late last month, the UK is expected to achieve herd immunity in two months while Malaysia will take 22 months to achieve herd immunity, where 75 per cent of the population is vaccinated,” he said.

Lim asked if Dr Adham will publicly state when Malaysia is expected to achieve herd immunity, and provide the time-line for each state as to when herd immunity would be achieved.