As of 15th March, there are 5.5M individuals in Malaysia who have registered for the Covid-19 vaccine through the MySejahtera app. As we all know, Malaysia launched the very first batch of Covid-19 vaccine on 24th February 2021, and at that time, The Prime Minister, Tan Sri Muhyiddin was among the Malaysian that received the first shot. By 29th March 2021, Malaysia will complete the vaccine delivery for the first quarter of this year.
So far there were 301,699 who had received vaccine injections through the national vaccine programme for the first phase. Nurses are among the biggest group (23.86%); doctors (22.23%); other health groups like pharmacist, medical assistance & ambulance drivers (23.4%); army, police & others (21.33%); and only 0.11% (302) involved government administrative members and elected representative, informed by Khairy Jamaluddin, the vaccine programme's coordinating minister.
The second phase will start from April to August 2021. This will involve senior citizens aged 65 and above, the high-risk groups, and the disabled involving some 9.4 million people while the planning for the third phase will start to roll out from May until December 2021, targeting more than 13.7 million people from both Malaysians and non-citizens above 18 years old.
The Covid-19 pandemic is no doubt giving a bad impact on all of us. On January 30, 2020, WHO declared the pandemic as a global health emergency of international concern. The number of cases keep increasing since then and forced the government to imposed travel restrictions. Many travelers had no choice but to cancel their trip. Airlines companies, the hotel industry, travel agents, as well as travelers had to bear the consequences of the trip cancellation.
Now that the vaccines are here, it is considered as the light at the end of the dark night for the tourism industry after struggling in a tough situation for more than a year. The arrival of vaccines in Malaysia may soon make travel possible again, slowly but surely.
The fact that the tourism industry was one of the major contributors to the economy, now is in survival mode is hitting us badly. Hoteliers in Malaysia also agreed that the Covid-19 pandemic has given a really bad impact on the hotel industry from this hotel business impact survey.
The promise of the vaccine brings hope to the tourism industry. The hotel sector plays an important role in the recovery process and boosts travelers' confidence. By implementing the below suggestions, we believe will helps to hasten the recovery stage and lead to a quicker rebound.
Some of the things as a hotel business owner that you might want to prepare and consider later once the vaccine for citizens started to roll out in May.
This situation is unprecedented, it is hard to say by when the tourism industry will recover and back to normal. However, if the vaccination plan takes off as scheduled, we might see the Malaysia tourism industry will slowly be back in the mid of 2021 onwards.
If you want to protect yourselves, your families, your business, let's get registered on the vaccination programme through the MySejahtera app and wait for your turn to receive the vaccine.