By Adrian Lim
KUCHING, May 5: There were less than 50 per cent of the elderly and high risk groups of people with and without comorbidities registered for Phase Two of the Covid-19 vaccination in Sarawak.
In highlighting this, State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) advisor Dato Sri Dr Sim Kui Hian disclosed that there are approximately 350,000 Sarawakians who registered for Phase Two of the inoculation programme currently as compared to 950,000 Sarawakians who are eligible for the vaccination under the second phase.
He added the Sarawak government requires more elderly people and those above the age of 18 to register for vaccination.
However, there are just 1.1 million people or 52.9 per cent of the population who have registered for the immunisation programme which translated into 2.18 million doses of the vaccine.
Based on the current number of those registered, he estimated that Sarawak will only need 2 million doses of vaccine.
“How to fight for more vaccines since we do not have the people? No one will give us more vaccines than necessary as vaccine supply is in critical shortage not only in Sarawak or Malaysia but worldwide.
“We may start slow, but we are ready and capable to scale up fast.
“But we need to have the numbers of registered for vaccination for us to vaccinate (Kementerian Kesihatan Malaysia (KKM) and private healthcare up to 80,000 jabs per day in Sarawak) once vaccines are increasingly and exponentially available in next four to six weeks,” he said in a Facebook post last night.
Dr Sim thus encourages those who have yet to register to quickly do so.
He also noted that there are 1.08 million Sarawakians aged 18 years and above who are eligible to receive the Covid-19 vaccine under Phase 3 of the immunisation programme from May to August 2021.
In the meantime, he revealed that Sarawak had received approximately 150,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccines before the end of April 2021.
Dr Sim who is also Minister for Local Government and Housing said the state is expected to receive a minimum of approximately 2,800,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine for May to July 2021. — DayakDaily
