GPs could vaccinate up to 150,000 people a day, says MMA

 

The average rate of around 21,000 vaccinations a day could be boosted seven-fold with the help of GPs, says Malaysian Medical Association president M Subramaniam.

PETALING JAYA: The Malaysian Medical Association (MMA) believes general practitioners (GPs) will be able to administer 150,000 vaccinations a day once the private sector begins to participate in phases 2 and 3 of the national Covid-19 immunisation programme.

Earlier this month, health minister Dr Adham Baba announced that private hospitals will be supplied with the government’s vaccines and will act as inoculation centres.

He also encouraged GPs to register with ProtectHealth in order to participate. So far, about 2,500 have done so.

In a statement, MMA president Dr Subramaniam Muniandy detailed how, if certain targets are met, Malaysia’s current average rate of around 21,000 jabs a day could be boosted seven-fold.

MMA president Subramaniam Muniandy.

He estimated that every GP could administer 30 jabs in a day.

Combined with the MMA’s target of getting 5,000 GPs registered to help in the vaccination effort, it would mean 150,000 vaccine doses every day.

At that rate, with 1,409,215 people currently having received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, it would take less than six months to reach the herd immunity threshold of 80% of the population.

“Many private GPs have expressed their support for the programme while some have even volunteered their services to assist the health ministry in Phase 3 when mass vaccinations will take place at vaccination centres nationwide,” Subramaniam said.

In order to avoid further delays and wasted resources, he proposed that consent forms be also made available online aside from the current printed format. - FMT