Over 1m have received at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose

 

Over one million people in the country have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine by the end of Thursday, according to daily updates from the Special Committee for Ensuring Access to Covid-19 Vaccine Supply (JKJAV).

The milestone came 72 days after the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme kicked off on Feb 24 with Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin’s inoculation against the disease.

All vaccines currently in use in the programme are two-dose vaccines, though a single dose still offers some short-term protection against the disease.

Meanwhile, 651,072 people have received at least two doses of the vaccine, which is expected to confer lasting protection against the disease.

A person’s vaccination is only considered complete two weeks after the second dose has been administered, since it takes time for the body to mount the necessary immune response. In that regard, 524,843 people have completed their Covid-19 vaccination.

Over the preceding 14 days, an average of 29,916 vaccine doses was administered per day.

However, these milestones still leave Malaysia a long way from reaching its goal of vaccinating 23.6 million people.

For comparison, Malaysia’s population this year is estimated at over 34.2 million people.

The one million who received their first dose only amounts to three percent of the goal, while those who received both doses amount to 1.9 percent of the population. This would have little impact on the course of the pandemic.

Bottleneck

Registration was also lagging, with only 9,888,764 people signed up for the programme as of Thursday. This is only 40.8 percent of Malaysia’s adult population or 28.9 percent of its overall population.

The programme’s coordinating minister Khairy Jamaluddin has blamed the lack of vaccine supplies as the reason for the programme’s slow rollout, but the situation is expected to improve when the pace of deliveries increases in June and July.

By then, however, the lack of registrations is expected to bottleneck the vaccination programme unless more people sign up to be inoculated.

The main vaccine used in Malaysia is Comirnaty, which is jointly developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. This amounts to 32 million doses, which is enough for 16 million people.

The country has also ordered 12.8 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and 12 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine (CoronaVac). All three are in use.

Malaysia has also ordered 3.5 million doses of CanSino Biologic’s vaccine and 6.4 million doses of the Sputnik V vaccine. Both are still pending regulatory approval.

Unlike other vaccines in Malaysia’s vaccine portfolio which require two doses for maximum protection, CanSino Biologic’s vaccine only requires a single dose. - Mkini