KUALA LUMPUR: Selangor will deliberate the call by health experts for children under 12 to be banned from entering Ramadan bazaars amid concerns that a large number of them are not vaccinated against Covid-19.
State executive councillor for local government, public transport and new village development Ng Sze Han said they were concerned over the matter and will discuss it at the next executive council meeting.
"For now, there are People's Volunteers Corp (Rela) and local council enforcement officers deployed at all Ramadan bazaars in the state to monitor the crowd and remind them of the standard operating procedures (SOP).
"If possible, parents should avoid bringing their children to crowded places if they are not fully immunised," he told the New Straits Times today.
National Security Council director-general Datuk Rodzi Md Saad had, last month, said it would not issue specific SOP for Ramadan bazaars unlike the two previous years at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The SOP this year, he said, was subject to the conditions set by the respective local authorities.
Malaysian Federation of Hawkers and Petty Traders Association as well as the Federal Territory Bumiputera Traders Association urged the Health Ministry to come up with the ban and related SOP as bazaar organisers have no power to bar people from entering their compounds.
Up to April 8, the ministry's CovidNow Portal showed that only 2.2 per cent or 77,834 children are fully inoculated while 38.3 per cent or 1,358,791 have received one of the two doses of the Covid-19 vaccine.
Last month, the ministry on its official Twitter account said the admission of children to paediatric intensive care units due to Covid-19 shot up by 94 per cent for categories 3 to 5 infections.
It saw a spike of 200 and 125 cases in categories 4 and 5 patients respectively.
Hospital Raja Perempuan Zainab II paediatric cardiologist Professor Dr Abdul Rahim Wong advised parents against taking their young and unvaccinated children out altogether.
The Kota Baru-based professor said the low vaccination rate of children in the state meant that they have a whole ward dedicated to them when they get infected with Covid-19.
Dr Abdul Rahim, who has treated children with multi-system inflammatory syndrome associated with Covid-19 (MIS-C), said their paediatric high-dependency unit has been converted into a Covid-19 paediatric unit.
Last month, deputy health minister Datuk Dr Noor Azmi Ghazali said 39 children aged 5 to 11 had died of Covid-19 since 2020.
