Pfizer vaccine shipment arrives to accelerate Sarawak adolescent inoculation
KUCHING: A shipment of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine arrived here Sunday night from Belgium to accelerate Sarawak’s inoculation drive for adolescents aged 12 to 17.
State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) advisor Dato Sri Dr Sim Kui Hian, who revealed this in a Facebook post, said the latest shipment was timely given that the Pfizer vaccine is the only one approved by the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA) of the Ministry of Health (MOH) for those aged between 12 and 17 years.
“We hope JKNS (Sarawak Health Department) can replan the schedule for the vaccination of those aged 12 to 15,” the Local Government and Housing Minister wrote in the post, adding that the last flight delivery for the Pfizer vaccine to Sarawak was on Aug 11.
He said based on the data released by the Department of Statistics Malaysia, this age group constituted 6.9 per cent or 192,800 of the state’s total population.
He also said Sarawak had proven itself beyond doubt in rolling out the vaccination for adults under the National Covid- 19 Immunisation Programme, stating this was why the state was entrusted to be the first in the country to vaccinate its adolescent population.
“Let’s aim to be the first for (administering the) third dose and booster dose next month (October) in Malaysia,” he added.
Dr Sim said although vaccines cannot be the only measure in Sarawak’s fight against Covid19, scientific data have proven the effectiveness of vaccines in decreasing severe infections and deaths as well as reducing the utilisation rate of intensive care unit (ICU) beds and ventilators.
Despite so, he said the community still needs to take other public health measures and non-pharmaceutical interventions to ‘live’ with the virus.
This would also help ensure that hospitals and healthcare facilities would not be overwhelmed by Covid-19 cases, he pointed out.
“Let’s fight Covid-19 together. Protect yourself, protect all,” he said.