The State Government should now set in motion the plan to engage the private clinics and hospitals to take a more active part in administering the Covid-19 vaccine.
So far, after 3 months of the State’s vaccination program starting from 27-2-2021, as at 1-6-2021, only 194,936 has received at least the first dose and 111,176 have received the second dose.
For the month of May, the total number of doses administered was 155,602, averaging 5,000 doses administered per day, with the except of a single-day maximum of 14,302 doses administered on 29/5/2021.
Even if that maximum single-day doses of 14,302 is to be taken as the present capacity of the vaccination team state-wide, in order to achieve the 50,000 doses administered per day target claimed by Dr Sim Kui Hian, the State Government will have to provide another 3 times the present teams and venues for vaccination. Is the State Government ready for that?
As at 1/6/2021, 1,239,586 Sarawakians have registered for vaccination out of which, only 194,936 have received at least their first dose. Many who have registered since February this year are still waiting for vaccination.
Therefore, it is most unwarranted for Dr Sim to complain that people are not keen to register when more than 80% of those who have registered are still waiting in vain for the Government to give them the appointment dates for vaccination.
1. When will these batches of 380,000 per week doses start arriving in Sarawak?
2. What will be the targeted number of vaccinations for each and every Pusat Pemberian Vasin (PPV) in Sarawak be once the vaccines have arrived?
3. How many private clinics in Sarawak will be doing the vaccination? Who are these private clinics? How many doses will each of these clinics do a day?
4. What other measures will be taken by the Government to achieve the new vaccinate rate of 50,000 per day which is 10 times faster than the rate we are doing in May?
When we are reading reports that things are moving back to normal in countries like UK and US where vaccination programs are successfully rolled out, we, in Sarawak and Malaysia, are now going south from bad to worse and having lockdowns and MCOs and higher infection cases and death from Covid-19.
For any right-thinking Malaysian or Sarawakian, this is most frustrating.
Therefore, unless some drastic and more effective action is taken, at the current rate of vaccination, we will not be able to hit the target of herd immunity even by end of this year and we will probably be stuck with these MCOs, RMCOs or FMCOs for another few months.
We call on the Government to tell us the detailed plan to expedite the vaccination program rather than plucking a figure of 50,000 doses per day without any supporting plan to achieve that figure. It is only with the full knowledge of the Government’s plan that the people can give full co-operation and support to make the vaccination program a success within the shortest possible time.
Chong Chieng Jen
DAP Sarawak Chairman
