By Nur Ashikin Louis
KUCHING, June 8: The Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) and State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) should look at mobilising more vaccine types to be administered at Borneo Convention Centre Kuching (BCCK) here sooner to help speed up the current vaccination rate and help ease the congestion in other vaccination centres (PPVs).
In making this call, Bandar Kuching Member of Parliament Dr Kelvin Yii Lee Wuen said they should consider using BCCK as a hybrid PPV to include not just the AstraZeneca (AZ) vaccine, but also other vaccines that are in the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (Pick) like Pfizer-BioNTech and Sinovac.
“Currently the PPV at BCCK is administering up to 1,000 doses a day and it does have plans to increase after this. I do hope they implement such an increase as soon as possible and even consider using it as a hybrid PPV to include other vaccines like Pfizer-BioNTech and Sinovac.
“This should be done concurrently as soon as possible without the need to wait until the ‘AZ opt-in’ programme finishes.
“This will help decentralise some of the congestion experienced by the public at the Kuching Indoor Stadium, and help accelerate the process. Currently, many still need to wait hours to receive their vaccine especially at the Stadium and this is extra taxing especially for the elderly and persons with special needs (OKUs),” he said in a statement today.
Dr Yii also informed that the Stadium is vaccinating about 2,000 individuals daily and stressed that the congestion at the venue will continue to increase as it aims to achieve its daily target of 5,000 vaccinations.
“As we increase our daily vaccination rate in order to achieve the targeted herd immunity, it is important for the government to look at decentralising more of these large-scale PPVs and open more middle/small-scale PPVs in each constituency.
“This is not just more convenient for the public but reducing the risk of a spread of the disease in a more congested large-scale PPVs,” he added. — DayakDaily
