By Lian Cheng
KUCHING, April 20: There are Sarawakians among the 40 medical frontliners who have already been vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech (Pfizer) vaccine but still found to be infected by Covid-19.
Local Government and Housing Minister Dr Sim Kui Hian explained that this was due to the fact that at the moment, Pfizer has the efficacy of 95 per cent.
“There are various medical scientific reasons for why the 40 medical frontliners including a few from Sarawak (to contract Covid-19 after Pfizer vaccination) were infected with Covid-19.
“In layman’s terms, even with the best Covid-19 vaccine at the moment, it is only 95 per cent effective. For every 100 persons vaccinated, five would have a chance of being infected. For every 100,000 people vaccinated, it would have a chance of being ineffective for 5,000 people,” explained Dr Sim in a social media post recently.
He added that without vaccination, it would mean that everyone is at risk of contracting Covid-19.
He thus called on all to grab the opportunity to be vaccinated and to not wait until there is a vaccine with an efficacy of 100 per cent.
On April 17, Health director general Tan Sri Noor Hisham Abdullah announced that a total of 40 healthcare workers were infected with Covid-19 even after being fully vaccinated.
He said nine cases of healthcare workers were infected more than two weeks after the second dose and 31 cases were infected less than two weeks of the second dose of inoculation.
Meanwhile, Dr Sim also announced that a new shipment containing PPE (personal protective equipment) had arrived in Kuching from China.
These include 350,000 pieces of medical plastic aprons, 240,000 pieces of medical shoe covers and 98,800 pieces of medical coveralls.
These PPE will be delivered to Sibu and Bintulu as soon as possible. — DayakDaily
