The individuals involved will be sent to a PPV based on the address that they have provided in the vaccination registration

by S BIRRUNTHA / pic by BERNAMA

INDIVIDUALS scheduled to receive vaccine injections under the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme at private health facilities will not be charged.

Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Khairy Jamaluddin Abu Bakar (picture) said the government will bear the charges and it applies only to private health facilities involved in the immunisation programme.

“In addition, general medical practitioners in private health facilities are currently being listed under ProtectHealth Corp Sdn Bhd, which is under the Health Ministry,” he said at a joint press conference with Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba on the latest updates of the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme yesterday.

Khairy added that the individuals involved will be sent to a vaccination dispensing centres (PPV) based on the address that they have provided in the vaccination registration.

If the registered address is nearby a PPV at a private health facility, they will be scheduled to receive the vaccine at that facility and vice versa.

He also noted that the move is aimed at facilitating the implementation of vaccination in the community nationwide.

On that note, Khairy said over 1.4 million vaccine registrations submitted on MySejahtera are incomplete.

He urged the people to complete their registration by verifying personal details and answering all health assessment questions provided in the application.

Meanwhile, Khairy said the Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine from China will be rolled out from March 18, with him being the first one to receive the vaccine at Rembau Hospital.

“A total of 100,000 doses of the Sinovac vaccine will arrive today and another batch of 100,000 doses on March 22,” he added.

Khairy said 83,070 doses of the Pfizer Inc-BioNTech SE vaccine also arrived yesterday, which will be followed by another 100,000 doses on March 22 and 125,190 doses on March 29.

He noted that by March 29, the cumulative number of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines in the country will be at 1,000,350 doses.

A total of 292,104 people received the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine as of March 13.

“Of that number, only 0.11% or 302 recipients were from elected representatives and administrative groups.

“Nurses made up the highest number vaccination recipients at 23.86%, followed by doctors (22.23%), other health staff such as medical assistants (23.4%), local authorities (21.33%), dentists (5.62%) and pharmacists (3.45%),” he added.

Khairy also highlighted that the Covid-19 vaccine procurement, which exceeds the need of the country, is a mitigation measure to the problem of conditional approval of several other vaccines that have not yet obtained the green light of the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Authority (NPRA).

He said apart from that, it is also to reduce the risk of the supply of vaccines arriving late in the country.

Currently, only three vaccines have received the NPRA’s conditional approval, while the others such as Sputnik V and CanSino have not been approved yet.

“So, we buy more to mitigate this problem. It would be better for Malaysia to have more vaccines in its portfolio to address the issue.

“Secondly, we are also worried about late delivery of the vaccines. For example, we should have received AstraZeneca plc’s vaccine in the first quarter, but so far, we have not received it due to the delivery schedule,” he noted.

Regarding the AstraZeneca vaccine, Khairy said local experts will examine the clinical data and information of the vaccine linked to several incidents of blood clots in other countries.

The vaccine manufacturer informed that currently, there is no data showing a direct link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and blood-clotting cases.

Previously, several countries including Austria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Denmark Ireland and Thailand announced the suspension of the vaccine administration, following several cases of blood clots suffered by AstraZeneca recipients.

On a separate matter, Dr Adham said the number of daily Covid-19 cases is projected to drop to 500 by May, provided that people adhere to the standard operating procedures (SOPs).

“The forecast was made based on the downward trend in the infectious rate (RT) or R-naught (R0) which was 0.87 yesterday compared to 0.9 on Feb 28.

“However, if the SOPs are not complied, the RT is expected to rise above 1.0 again, thus increasing the number of daily cases,” he noted.

As of March 14, most states achieved an RT value of less than 1.0 except Terengganu and Penang.

For the period of Feb 28 to March 14, green zone districts in the peninsula have increased from six districts to 11.

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Read our previous report here

1.4 million persons did not complete vaccine registration