By Tay Tian Yan, Sin Chew Daily

Unhappy with the change of her father's vaccination appointment, a Chinese woman angrily slammed Khairy at the Sunway vaccination center.

She raised her voice and and said agitatedly, "Because of you people I had to resort to doing something shameful to resolve this issue."

Everyone was losing their heads, not knowing what to do with the sudden outburst.

Khairy politely told the woman to calm down and started to find out what she wanted before asking the staff to help handle the matter.

Investigation later found that the woman's father had inserted the wrong IC number when providing his particulars. The issue was subsequently resolved.

Instant dissolution of a potential clash won the minister tons of thumbs-up after the video went viral on social media.

Khairy used to give people an impression that he was young and brash but his EQ has obviously picked up following years of ups and downs in politics.

At a time when the PN government is suffering from generally poor public image with many of the ministers heavily slammed by people, Khairy's performance is unusually good.

When he was first appointed the science, technology and innovation minister, few knew about the importance of this portfolio. Some felt even if he did perform well, he would at most be manning an under-budgeted, understaffed department housed in a very modest office. Indeed, in our power-first government structure, his ministry was perceived as more of ornamental value.

Khairy did not get appointed a ministerial position because of Umno's recommendation but Muhyiddin saw his representation in the country's youth community. More importantly, he does not belong to the Najib/Zahid camp.

When Muhyiddin put up his cabinet, he did not foresee that the coronavirus pandemic could become so serious as it is now, and he was actually not prepared to hand over such a momentous responsibility to Khairy.

Khairy's position was not even this important, say, six months back. The mainstay of the country's anti-COVID strategy for much of the past one year plus has been on quarantine and treatment with the hope of breaking the infection chain through the enforcement of control measures and the provision of screening tests and treatment, while trying to avert an economic crash, of course.

As such, other than the prime minister himself, the other very important persons at the forefront of the battle against the virus have been the two senior ministers Ismail Sabri and Azmin Ali, along with health DG Noor Hisham Abdullah.

Unfortunately our defense line against the virus fell apart subsequently, allowing the virus to spread very rapidly in our community and putting our healthcare system on the brink of collapse. Both Sabri and Noor Hisham do not seem to be able to come up with any effective solution to tackle the spike in new infections.

The only thing that can save the country now is the vaccine.

Khairy has been tasked with the mission of coordinating the country's vaccine supply and national vaccination program. In most other countries, such a job is normally not handled by the science minister but the health minister. Apparently human factor is at play here.

As vaccine is now the single most crucial factor in the country's war against the virus, Khairy has become the key person in this whole thing. Decisions on vaccine supply and immunization will determine how successful the country's anti-virus strategy will be, as well as the young minister's political future.

No doubt we had a slow start in vaccine procurement firstly due to the wait-and-see attitude of the government and then the lengthy vetting process of NPRA (National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency).

Khairy has become a target of public censure as a consequence of inadequate vaccine supply and sluggish immunization rate. The many gray areas in vaccine supply such as confidential price negotiations with the suppliers and government monopoly in supply arrangements have evolved into political issues that have since aroused public skepticism.

As pricing is classified information, people started to suspect whether the government had overpaid for the vaccines. As the deal was solely between the suppliers and the government, many felt the government was profiteering from a monopolized business.

While these are the rules and norms prevailing in the international vaccine market, in a country where public faith in the government is pathetically low, the same have developed into big political issues.

By virtue of his position, suer enough Khairy has no way to avert the issues but to confront them. On the donation of two million doses of vaccines in Penang, he ordered an immediate probe to dismiss the allegations and prevent the issue from snowballing into a much bigger one.

As for the vaccine supply, based on the schedule, the supply should increase significantly in June, and 16 million doses are expected to arrive in Malaysia by July, with more to come to meet and even exceed the country's needs.

The rate of immunization has come under heavy public censure and many question whether the goal of herd immunity could be achieved before the year ends.

If only 20,000 or even 50,000 or 100,000 doses are to be administered each day, indeed we won't reach the herd immunity goal before the end of the year, as Khairy has pledged.

But, with more vaccination centers being set up, including the repurposed large convention centers, we can look forward to some 150,000 inoculations each day beginning next week, and perhaps 200,000 or more. This will put us ahead of most regional countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, with the only exception of Singapore.

Then achieving the herd immunity goal by the end of this year is not completely impossible.

Of course, even with the vaccines at hand, there is still this challenge to get more people to get inoculated.

What is of critical importance now is not the number of new infections reported each day or whether a total lockdown will be enforced and be effective, or whether daily new infection numbers will drop soon.

The crucial thing now is the speed with which the national vaccination program is executed.

The vaccines must outrun the virus. We can only flatten the curve if we have more people immunized against the virus!

This is a race between Khairy and the vaccines, and the entire nation is watching him!

Let's put our political differences aside for the time being. While we must still keep a close eye on him to make sure he does his job well, more so we must join in the race and run with him in order to keep the virus at bay.