A health worker administers a dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. — Bernama photo
KUCHING (May 28): Covid-19 National Immunisation Programme coordinating minister Khairy Jamaluddin said the government will be mobilising outreach teams to go into Sarawak’s interior to get rural folks to register for the state’s Covid-19 vaccination programme.
He said in an effort to intensify Sarawak’s vaccination programme, the state would need to administer Covid-19 vaccines to at least 2.2 million of its residents by the end of August, including those living in the rural areas and longhouses.
“We will mobilise outreach teams to go to the rural areas and longhouses so that they would not be left out of the vaccination programme,” he said in a press conference today.
Khairy earlier attended a meeting with the Sarawak Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) to find ways to accelerate the vaccination in the state so that it would achieve its 2.2 million people target by the end of August, which would make it the first state in the country to complete the programme.
To complement that, he said Sarawak will intensify its hybrid vaccine registration system, making use of both MySejahtera and manual registration for those who do not have access to technology or internet coverage.
On that note, Khairy said more general practitioners’ (GP) clinics and private hospitals in the state would be appointed as Covid-19 vaccination centres to speed up the vaccination process.
“At the moment there are 23 GPs and five private hospitals appointed as vaccination centres here, and we want to increase it to 39 GPs and seven.
“If needed we will appoint more GPs,” he said.
On top of that, he said setting up in situ vaccination centres in industrial and agricultural areas were also proposed.
He said once implemented, workers at those areas would not need to go all the way to public vaccination centres since the set up would be in situ.
A taskforce will also be set up to coordinate these vaccination centres, he added.
In relation to that, Khairy also mentioned the possibility of setting up in situ vaccination centres in large scale commercial areas in the state such as shopping malls with a large concentration of people and workers.
“We are also looking at in situ vaccination for places with many people. I recently had a discussion with the Malaysia Shopping Mall Association, where they offered their shopping malls to do vaccination for their retail staff.
“So we can offer the same for Sarawak as well, as long as there is a big concentration of workers, we can set up quickly, and we can get the private GPs to inoculate them.
“That’s also a model we can do. The main thing is we want to do this as quickly as possible,” he said.
Meanwhile, Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Amar Douglas Uggah Embas, who is also Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) chairman, said the state so far managed to mobilise personnel at existing vaccination centres statewide with the capabilities of administering 50,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines per day.
“A lot of issues have been resolved in today’s meeting, for example the hybrid vaccine registration system after taking into account not all in Sarawak can use MySejahtera because of no internet coverage.
“We would also like to thank Khairy for agreeing to set up vaccination centres in industrial and agricultural areas including forming a taskforce to coordinate them.
“With this Sarawak’s vaccination capacity has increased,” he said.