Selangor only received 615k Covid-19 vaccine doses, not 2.9m - exco

 

The Selangor Health Department only received over 615,000 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine as of June 1, not 2.9 million, said state health exco Dr Siti Mariah Mahmud.

She was responding to a report on May 30 data from the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry (Mosti) which appeared to indicate that over two million doses of Covid-19 vaccines have not been used in Selangor.

"I have checked with the state Health Department who raised that for now, the number of vaccines received by Selangor is insufficient.

"So it does not arise the Selangor received 2.9 million vaccine doses and it is impossible for Selangor to have an excess of 2.5 million doses in store," Siti Mariah (above) said in a statement this evening.

The Selangor Health Department is a federal agency under the Health Ministry. The distribution of vaccines is handled by the federal government.

The 615,210 doses for Selangor comprise Pfizer (434,070), Sinovac (146,440) and AstraZeneca (34,700), Siti Mariah said.

She added that of the 615,000 doses the state had received by June 1, 425,970 doses have already been administered.

Siti Mariah said the Mosti data cited in the CodeBlue article was not in sync with statistics for vaccines received and administered in Selangor.

She noted there were discrepancies where some states administered more than they received showed that the data was inaccurate and confusing.

According to the Mosti data, as of May 30, Kuala Lumpur was said to have received 215,280 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine but has administered 405,549 - a discrepancy of more than 190,000.

Mosti minister Khairy Jamaluddin, who is also in charge of the Covid-19 vaccination programme, told the press on Monday that dose distribution was based on population coverage and registration numbers.

"(We are also) now shifting, pivoting and giving more vaccines to the states which are ground zero, in particular the Klang Valley," he was quoted as saying by CodeBlue, a health news portal.

Selangor has consistently reported four-digit Covid-19 cases daily - the highest number of cases in the country - amid a nationwide upsurge in infections.

Siti Mariah said the state has the capacity to administer more doses of Covid-19 vaccines now but they can't maximise the use of vaccination centres because the number of vaccines received by the state was only as mentioned.

"As such, I urge for the implementation of the vaccination programme to be done transparently with accurate and up to date data," she said. - Mkini