Labuan achieves 90 per cent vaccination rate

LABUAN: Ninety per cent or 62, 632 of the adult population of Labuan have been vaccinated as of Saturday (July 17).

Labuan Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) chairman Rithuan Ismail said of the number, 62 per cent or 42, 501 have completed their second dose of Covid-19 vaccines.

“The achievement of getting such a high number of people to get vaccinated is an uneasy task…this is the result of close cooperation from the people at large, the various government agencies and the People’s Representative Councils.

“The opening up of more vaccination centres (PPVs), walk-in and drive-thru methods greatly helped expedite the vaccination exercise,” he told Bernama.

He said the CITF has listed a total of 68, 500 adults on the duty-free island to receive their vaccines, either Pfizer-BioNTech or Sinovac, at five PPVs namely the Labuan Matriculation College hall, Dewan Sri Labuan Public Works Department, Kompleks Darul Kifayah hall, multipurpose hall Blok B Taman Perumahan Mutiara and Dewan Foo Chow.

Rithuan also disclosed that of the figure (90 per cent vaccinated), only 9.6 per cent were non-Malaysians.

“Our target is to get all people aged 18 years old and above, regardless of their nationality status, so long as they live in Labuan, they can have the vaccine, this is one way to contain the spread of Covid-19” he said.

Rithuan also said that the Labuan Health Department’s mobile vaccination team had started giving vaccine shots to persons with disabilities, the elderly and bedridden patients house-to-house.

Meanwhile, Labuan Health Department director Dr Ismuni Bohari said a total of 40,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine would arrive in Labuan on July 20 which be able to cater to 20,000 individuals.

“Besides giving vaccines to the locals, we feel obliged to also give vaccines to those in the oil and gas and shipping sectors, as they frequently come to the island,” he said.

Dr Ismuni also said that only 2.3 per cent of the 494 people screened for Covid-19 in the two squatter settlements in Kampung Saguking/Gersik on Saturday (July 17) tested positive.

The exercise is part of the Labuan Disaster Management Committee’s (LDMC) efforts to contain spread of Covid-19 at the densely-populated settlements, with half the population there being foreigners.

Labuan is seeing a downward trend in the number of individuals testing positive for Covid-19, with only two digits new cases reported the past few days.