Boxes of Covid-19 vaccines arriving at the Kuching International Airport today. – Photo by Dr Sim Kui Hian/Facebook
KUCHING (April 29): Sarawak may end up with more Covid-19 vaccines than recipients due to the number of people who have not registered for the immunisation programme, said Local Government and Housing Minister Dato Sri Dr Sim Kui Hian.
He said that additional scheduled Covid-19 vaccines, Sinovac, from the National Covid-19 vaccination programme was enroute to Kuching, aside from more scheduled weekly shipment from now on.
“There are 2.2 million Sarawakians eligible for the National Covid-19 vaccination programme. However, current registration is only 1.2 million or 55 per cent, with 868,000 registered via the MySejahtera app and another 250,000 to 300,000 via manual registration, after data cleaning for duplication,” said Dr Sim in a Facebook post this evening.
“At this rate, by July, we may have vaccines but not enough Sarawakian for vaccination,” he said, urging Sarawakians to register for the vaccination.
Dr Sim said currently in Malaysia there are three types of vaccines – Pfizer-BioNTech, Sinovac and AstraZeneca which are administered in two doses.
He added that there were two more vaccines which are pending National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency approval, which are the single dose CanSino vaccine and the two-dose Sputnik vaccine.
“More types of vaccines and more doses of vaccines will be available in Malaysia from May onwards. Sarawak is ready to scale up fast, up to 50,000 jabs per day from both private and public healthcare facilities,” said Dr Sim.
“We should be on track to complete vaccination for those eligible registered Sarawakians by August.”
Dr Sim yesterday said that Sarawakians will not be inoculated with the controversial AstraZeneca vaccine after the Covid-19 National Immunisation Programme coordinating minister Khairy Jamaluddin offered it to the state, owing to concerns over its upcoming state polls.
The AstraZeneca vaccine has been the cause of some concern due to its side effects.
Khairy had said the vaccine would only be given through dedicated vaccination centres on a first-come-first-served basis, to those who want to take it voluntarily.
He said the decision was taken to avoid disrupting the ongoing immunisation programme but reiterated that the AstraZeneca vaccine was safe.
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