KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 15 — Malaysia is on track to achieve the target of getting 50 per cent of its adult population fully vaccinated this month, says the coordinating minister for the National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK), Khairy Jamaluddin.
Khairy said PICK had started to show early positive results with the programme administering 12 million doses of vaccines in July alone, which were more than eight million cumulative doses it administered from February to June.
“Our average daily vaccination rate for July was almost 400,000, surpassing our target of 300,000. We started the month behind advanced countries like Australia, Japan and South Korea, but finished the month considerably ahead.
“Our ramp-up has been internationally recognised and we have been recording daily vaccinations in excess of half a million doses.
“This shows what we have always known, what was holding us back was not the lack of capacity, resources or competency, but rather not having a consistent supply of vaccines due to the global vaccine inequity and the hoarding of vaccines by certain countries which has been condemned by the World Health Organisation,” he said in a video posted on his Twitter account today.
According to Khairy, PICK has also achieved the goal of ensuring 100 per cent of adults in the Klang Valley received at least a single dose, in a complex exercise called Operation Surge Capacity which involved administering an average of 235,000 doses daily throughout the exercise.
Thus, he thanked all the parties involved and hoped to see the inflection point for hospitalisation and deaths in the Klang Valley in the next few weeks as people get their second dose.
Khairy said Malaysia had now crossed more than 40 per cent of its adult population receiving two doses and more than 50 per cent of its total population having received at least a single dose, while 81 per cent of all registered adults had received at least a single dose of vaccine.
In the video, Khairy also mentioned the effectiveness of PICK in Labuan with 60 per cent of its total population having been fully vaccinated and 56 per cent in Sarawak.
Thereby, since the start of July, the number of COVID-19 patients in the ICU has dropped by 60 per cent in Sarawak and close to 100 per cent in Labuan, while other key data like deaths and serious hospitalisation are also on a downtrend.
“We know that the Delta variant is prevalent in both Sarawak and Labuan, yet Alhamdulillah, the vaccines are having their intended effect of reducing the severity of COVID-19,” he said.
Khairy also encouraged more foreign workers and migrants to get vaccinated and PICK would be working together with non-governmental organisations to get the refugee community vaccinated soon, while people in the prisons and detention centres would also be inoculated in the coming weeks.
“We had a very good July and we are on track for our August targets. We need to work hard to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible so that our economy can open, our people can recover and our nation can heal.
“I will not stop until every adult is fully vaccinated by the end of October. That has been my promise to you. I hope I can see this through,” he said.
