Vaccination drive for Taman Permai folk garners great response
SIBU: The vaccination programme conducted at Sibu Hospital for the people of Taman Permai here for the time yesterday received encouraging response, as the majority of those registered turned up for their appointments.
For this session, a total of 62 volunteers and staff members were on duty.
Programme coordinator Senator Robert Lau said it was a community project run under Sibu Hospital, in collaboration with Sibu Oya Road Community Association.
“This is a Sibu Hospital community project, in that it (hospital) runs the vaccination drive especially for members of the public on weekends.
“Some of the hospital staff members are volunteering for the programme. It is Sibu Hospital’s first community project and we have received an overwhelming response, where about 4,000 names from Taman Permai have been submitted to us,” he told reporters when met at Sibu Hospital yesterday.
He said the vaccination drive would be conducted at Sibu Hospital every Saturday, involving the administration of 1,000 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine each time.
According to the senator, Taman Permai has been chosen due to the severity of Covid-19 cases there – described as the third worse-hit zone in Sibu.
He also said the plan to vaccinate the residents of Taman Permai was discussed and organised about two weeks ago. In this respect, he said volunteers from Sibu Oya Road Community Association had gone from door to door, calling upon the residents to register.
“Many residents there are rural-urban migrants, and they are renting cheap units. So, these are the vulnerable group of people.
“Their vaccination rate is the lowest; that’s why the number of Covid-19 cases there has been high. If we didn’t deal with this community, we could not protect ourselves because we did not protect those under the vulnerable group,” he said.
According to Lau, Taman Permai has a population of around 20,000 and some of them have received vaccination elsewhere.
“Those who have yet to register for vaccination are those who have no information about vaccination, because they do not read the newspapers or watch any news.
“Thus, it was important to reach out to them. Sibu may have 70 per cent or 80 per cent (of people) being vaccinated, but we cannot leave out that remaining 30 per cent.
“That’s why we must do (vaccination on the) targeted group,” he said.
Adding that they had six teams going around Tiong Hua Zone on Friday – each assigned to a different lane and street – Lau said they had gone around asking the residents of that neighbourhood to register for vaccination.
“We managed to register about 300 people there (Tiong Hua Zone),” he said, adding that the Sukun area would be the next target area.
Meanwhile, Sibu Hospital director Dr Nanthakumar Thirunavukkarasu said it was important to have all vaccination programme completed as soon as possible so that the hospital could continue with its normal operations.
According to him, even though the plan was to run this community vaccination drive every Saturday, its implementation would still depend on the availability of the vaccine.
“We want to resume all normal operations by next month.
“There are other things that we need to take care as well.
“So, we hope to speed up the vaccination drive and achieve herd immunity as soon as possible,” he said.