‘GOVT MAY SET DEADLINE FOR VACCINATION REGISTRATION’
It cannot stay open forever as task force needs to plan mass inoculation in detail, says prime minister
THE government may set a deadline for Malaysians to register for the Covid19 National Immunisation Programme (NIP). Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said registration for the NIP could not remain open indefinitely as the Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force needed to undertake detailed planning for the mass inoculation.
“We need to set a deadline, for example, closing registration at the end of June, so those who did not register will not get their jab.
“The task force can then plan who to give jabs to, when and where,” he said at a town hall on the Shared Prosperity Vision at the Sabah Administrative Centre here yesterday.
He was responding to a question from an audience member on his vaccination experience and the progress of the NIP.
Muhyiddin, the first Malaysian to be vaccinated against Covid-19, received his second Pfizer-BioNTech dose last Wednesday.
Some six million people have registered for the NIP via the MySejahtera application.
Despite setting a target of getting 80 per cent of the Malaysian population immunised, Muhyiddin said the government had committed to acquiring 20 per cent more than the needed vaccine supply to vaccinate specific groups and non-citizens.
He said he did not experience extraordinary side effects from both doses of the vaccine even though he was a cancer survivor and had undergone chemotherapy before.
“My advice is, do not worry. I hope the people of Sabah will register (for the vaccination).”
Meanwhile, at the Covid-19 vaccination centre at the Federal Administrative Complex here, Sabah Health director Datuk Dr Christina Rundi said Sabah had its ways of getting people vaccinated apart from registering via the MySejahtera app.
She was commenting on the low registration rate for the NIP in Sabah, standing at nine per cent of the population, or 262,000 people.
“We have online registration via the app and also manually.
“We are not dependent on MySejahtera registration as we do have lists and departments to
sort it out.
“The state Welfare Department also helps us and we can pull data from our hospital records. We also have people on the ground going to places with limited Internet access and to those who don’t own mobile phones.
“If there is (vaccine) stock, we will administer it to the people. We do not only wait for MySejahtera data.”
She said healthcare teams would be mobilised in the second and third phases of the NIP next month and in May.
She said yesterday marked the last day of the first phase of the NIP with the aim of inoculating 42,117 frontliners in Sabah.
From next month, the second phase of the NIP will begin, with 268,000 people with health risks and above age 60 getting the jab.
Unlike the first phase where people go to vaccination centres to get jabbed, Dr Christina said the next phase would involve mobile teams to reach out to the community.
“We are thankful to the police for their aid in ensuring the vaccine supply reached districts safely and that the cold chain management was handled well to prevent wastage.”