SIBU, May 14: While most senior citizens aged 75 and above have received their Covid-19 vaccine, residents of Sibu Benevolent Society and Nursing Home are pondering when they can have theirs.
The 28 residents of the Home where some of them have comorbidities such as high blood pressure and diabetes, want to be jabbed as soon as possible.
Vice chairman of the Home, Robert Chew today appealed to the authority not to wait any longer as the residents are also categorised as a vulnerable group of people who need the vaccine against the virus.
“It should be done soonest as we should not wait any longer considering the virus is still in our midst,” he appealed.
He added that a team of doctors came to the home last month to conduct a vaccine qualifying test on the residents.
However, since then he had not been updated by the team on how many of the residents qualify for the vaccine and when is the vaccination date.
“The test was to determine whether they are qualified for the vaccination based on their health condition. It has been a month already and we have not heard from them on the date for the vaccination,” he said.
During a meeting with the team, Chew said he had requested that the residents be vaccinated at the home instead of at the common vaccination centre.
“Our reason is that it would be difficult for us to look after them when they have to be sent to another vaccination centre,” he said.
Sibu MP Oscar Ling had, on May 10, appealed to the Federal Government to give priority to all vulnerable groups including old folks of nursing homes to be vaccinated.
Ling said all nursing homes in Kuching have already be given vaccines but not those in Sibu.
“The government never learned from the past. All nursing homes in Sibu still have not been allocated vaccines for old folks under their care to be vaccinated,” he said.
Ling said even though the national vaccination programme is entering the third phase, the most vulnerable group in the community, old folks under nursing care have yet to be vaccinated.
He feared that another cluster would be detected if the inmates are not jabbed.
The first cluster involving a nursing home was the Geronggang Cluster at Jalan Geronggang here.
The index case was a 77-year-old man who is a resident there who had tested positive for Covid-19 on Feb 10 through a screening. A total of 40 people from the cluster were positive with the virus.
On Feb 15, 10 persons from Sibu Benevolent Society which consist of eight residents and two staff members were tested positive with Covid-19.
They were discharged from Sibu Hospital 10 days later, having recovered from the virus attack. — DayakDaily
