Bandar Kuching MP Kelvin Yii Lee Wuen during an interview with Malay Mail at Parliament August 25, 2020. — Picture by Ahmad Zamzahuri
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KUCHING, May 26 — Bandar Kuching MP Dr Kelvin Yii today said the Covid-19 Vaccine Supply Access Guarantee Special Committee (JKJAV) should have been more prepared to cater for the surge of online traffic from the public who sought to register for the AstraZeneca (AZ) vaccine.
He said the JKJAV should have planned better to reduce the afternoon glitches as it was not the first time it was dealing with the mass registrations.
“While I am happy there is an overwhelming response to the AZ opt-in, which shows people’s eagerness to get the vaccine, but it basically also shows people’s frustration at how slow current vaccination rate is, and how the federal government does not seem to learn from past mistakes,” he said when responding to complaints and frustrations posted by the people on social media.
He said the system has let down those who earlier hesitated to register for the Covid-19 vaccination programme.
“If the government knows that the centralised system may not have been able to handle the nationwide traffic at one time, they should have decentralised it and allowed each state’s registration to be on different days.
“All they need is to reserve a certain quota based on population and infective rate of that particular area and then open different dates for different states,” he suggested.
He said he was informed that many of the elderly who have registered for the second part of this opt-in programme have not received their confirmation message even after 48 hours that was promised in the system.
“This has to be properly addressed,” he said, adding that this is to instil confidence in the National Immunisation Programme.