Dr Sim (centre), flanked by Lo (his left) and Ahmad, talking a member of the public at a Covid-19 vaccination registration counter set up by MPP at a market at seventh mile here today.
KUCHING (Mar 28): The over 9,000 doses of Sinovac vaccine that arrived in Sarawak recently would be given to frontliners with no comorbidities and aged 60 and below, said Local Government and Housing Minister Dato Sri Dr Sim Kui Hian.
He said that currently, this was the criteria set by the Health Ministry for recipients of the Sinovac vaccine.
“However, we have told the ministry right at the beginning of our preference for the Covid-19 vaccines but the existing policy remains fluid,” he said.
Dr Sim said the state government’s strategy for the time being was to get as many Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses as possible for the public, while being aware of the challenges in storing the vaccine at a temperature of negative 70 degrees Celsius during the transportation into the interior.
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“We are also being advised by the Sarawak Covid-19 Vaccine Advisory Group and if there are other types of vaccine becoming available in June or July, the state government will definitely look into it,” he said this during a visit to a Covid-19 vaccination registration counter set up by Padawan Municipal Council (MPP) at a market at seventh mile here today.
Observing the market trend, he opined the supply of vaccines around the globe would start to pick up from April to June before being more widely available staring July.
Dr Sim also remarked it was pertinent for the state to record high vaccination registration rate among the people in the state, as it could act as a bargaining chip for state to demand for more vaccines doses from Putrajaya.
He added the neighbourhood watch committees (KRT) and local councils had been instructed to assist in pushing for a higher vaccination registration rate among the public, either through Mysejahtera app or setting up registration counters.
To achieve herd immunity, Dr Sim stressed 70 per cent of the state population need to be vaccinated, effectively meaning that 99 per cent of those aged 18 and above needed to be inoculated.
“The purpose of vaccination is not individualistic in nature. Once enough people or 70 per cent of the population has been vaccinated, transmission of Covid-19 virus can be stopped and mutations of the coronavirus would be prevented. This is the ultimate aim.”
If the state failed to achieve herd immunity and new variants of Covid-19 virus emerge, Dr Sim warned it might render the vaccine that was injected into one’s body useless in guarding against a mutated virus.
It was reported earlier that 600,000 people in the state had registered for vaccination manually and another 500,000 registered via MySejahtera app, representing about half of the targeted population to be inculcated.
Nonetheless, Dr Sim said the state government was still confident of vaccinating 2.2 million people in the state by August, with the state embarking on its own negotiations with vaccine manufacturing companies, such as Pfizer, to procure more vaccine doses.
For the whole country, Dr Sim said he was of the understanding that 600,000 Sinovac vaccine doses would arrive next month, 3.7 million Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses would arrive for the month of April to June and another 12 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for the period of July to September.
“This is why we are only demanding from the federal government for our fair share of the vaccines and in case they could not afford the volume of vaccine doses that we requested, we has offered them that we can buy the vaccines on our own,” said Dr Sim.
Among those in attendance during the visit to the registration counter was MPP chairman Lo Khere Chiang and deputy chairman Dato Ahmad Ibrahim.
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