Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said the amount of Covid-19 vaccines supplied to Selangor was based on data provided during a meeting with its Menteri Besar Amirudin Shari.
In that meeting, Khairy said the Selangor government informed it could only administer 40,000 shots a day for June.
As such, Khairy said he was unsure why Selangor exco member in charge of health Siti Mariah Mahmud was accusing the Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) of undersupplying Covid-19 vaccines to the state.
"We did send vaccines and there is still a surplus in Selangor. We want to send more vaccines but we need to look at their capacity.
"I had a meeting with Selangor two weeks ago and the state government itself said the capacity for June is 40,000 shots a day.
"So I am not sure (why Siti Mariah was criticising) because she was not in the meeting between the menteri besar and me," he told a press conference after visiting a new vaccination centre at Tanjung Karang Farmers' Management Institute today.
However, Khairy said Selangor is expected to be able to administer 130,000 shots a day in July and the number of Covid-19 vaccines supplied to the state will also be ramped up accordingly.
Yesterday, Khairy's aide said Selangor's Covid-19 vaccine utilisation rate was among the lowest in the country, at 75.2 percent. Khairy said he wants this to increase to 90 percent.
At today's presser, the minister in charge of the vaccine programme said a total of 322,606 out of 1.367 million doses of vaccines that arrived in Selangor have yet to be dispensed.
Khairy urged all states to ramp their daily vaccination rate to above 90 percent in July as more vaccine supplies are expected to arrive next month.
The task force decided to increase the capacity of the existing vaccination centres or open up more of them to boost the vaccination rate, he added.
For this purpose, Khairy said that a vaccination centre will be set up in every district by September.
He also announced that a vaccination centre will be set up in almost every state to carry out the vaccination programme for the industrial sector under the Public-Private Partnership Covid-19 Industry Immunisation Programme (Pikas).
"The Pikas programme will be refined in July, we are finalising the total vaccine doses that we will provide for Pikas, we are scrutinising the need without disrupting the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme," he said, adding that the Pikas pilot project was running smoothly.
As of June 16, a total of 2,082 companies nationwide with 301,050 workers had applied to participate in the Pikas programme.
On June 26, International Trade and Industry Minister Azmin Ali claimed that his ministry needed to secure 1.9 million doses of the vaccine for the manufacturing sector to achieve herd immunity.
"We need about 600,000 doses in July. We need another 600,000 in August while in September (another) 795,000 doses. These vaccine supplies are important for the success of Pikas.
"On behalf of the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry, Khairy has given his assurance that Pikas should be allocated 600,000 doses to run the programme.
"By end of September, we should be able to complete the whole exercise and hopefully achieve herd immunity in the manufacturing sector," he said. - Mkini
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