Sarawak able to vaccinate 50,000 individuals per day, says Dr Sim

Logistics carefully handling the vaccines at KIA before they are dispatched to their respective vaccination centres.

By Ling Hui

KUCHING, April 22: Sarawak is expected to be able to vaccinate an average of 50,000 individuals a day, says State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) advisor Dato Sri Dr Sim Kui Hian.

With about one million doses of Covid-19 vaccines in June and another one million in July, he said Sarawak is quietly confident of vaccinating 2.2 million eligible Sarawakians by August.

In the meantime, he said Sarawak is looking forward to hearing good news from the Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) and Ministry of Health (KKM) on more vaccine supplies for the Covid-19 red zones in Sarawak, as promised by the federal government.

“Looking forward to hearing good news from CITF and KKM on vaccine prioritisation to red zones with outbreaks in Sarawak, which is over and on top of the vaccine quota schedule for Phase 2,” he said in a Facebook post yesterday (April 21).

He wrote this statement after the arrival of this week’s vaccines from Kuala Lumpur at Kuching International Airport (KIA).

On the scheduled vaccine supply to the whole of Malaysia, Dr Sim said he was made to understand Malaysia would be receiving a total of 12.5 million doses of vaccines of different brands in the second quarter of the year, which is from April to June.

Unlike in the first quarter from February to March where Malaysia only acquired Pfizer-BioNTech and Sinovac vaccines, the second quarter of vaccination would include Pfizer, Sinovac, AstraZeneca and also Cansino which is awaiting approval from National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA).

The 12.5 million doses are targetted for eight million Malaysians in Phase Two and another 15 million in Phase Three, but he said many in Phase Two were found to have not registered themselves.

In the third quarter of 2021 from July to September, he added Malaysia is scheduled to receive a total of 28 million doses for the rest of the public. — DayakDaily