MOH will only recommend opening borders with higher booster rates - KJ

The Health Ministry (MOH) will only make recommendations to the government on the reopening of the country’s borders and relaxing the requirements on quarantine period when the Covid-19 booster vaccination rate among adults and the vaccination rates for kids showed improvement.

Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said although the booster vaccination rate among adults had surpassed 50 percent as of today, he still wants to see a higher number before making any recommendation.

“The MOH is still having internal discussions on what threshold values we feel comfortable with in terms of vaccination for children and booster vaccination for adults. We will be making recommendations to the quartet ministerial meeting.

“I want to see a bit more (booster vaccination rate). I call on everyone who has yet to get the booster shot to go get it, and to all parents to enrol their children in the immunisation programme,” he told a press conference after launching the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme for Kids (NIPKids) at the Tunku Azizah Hospital here today.

He said 30 percent of senior citizens have yet to receive their booster shots while for adolescents, experts have yet to recommend booster shots for them.

Meanwhile, Khairy also advised the public not to panic with the increase in the daily tally of Covid-19 cases of late as the number was already expected to be on the rise following the spread of the Omicron variant.

“What we need to do now is to look into the severity of the cases, not on the number of cases. If we simply look at the number, of course, we would be worried, but no need to panic.

“The MOH is constantly monitoring those important data and what we are seeing now is a lot more short stays in the hospital. So far, we are seeing the rise of cases but this is not related to severity,” he said.

He said the MOH was also monitoring the development of the new Omicron subvariant as reported by the World Health Organization on Tuesday.

On education clusters, the minister said there were 180 active clusters with most cases reported between Jan 1 and Feb 5 involving boarding schools.

However, he said no severe cases or categories four and five were reported.

- Bernama