Vaccination centres to open 7 days a week starting June

 

COVID-19 | Authorities in charge of the Covid-19 immunisation programme expect to open the vaccination centres seven days a week starting June.

Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Khairy Jamaluddin today said that for now, the centres will operate six days a week as they are facing issues with supply of vaccines.

"At the moment, based on vaccine supplies, it is scheduled that vaccination centres operate on a six-day week. Once supply is increased, then we will increase the number of days to seven days a week.

"We discussed this at the Covid-19 task force meeting, and we are projecting that in June we will start utilising the centres on a seven-day week.

"The issue is not about manpower, but rather an issue of vaccine supply," he told a virtual press conference earlier today.

Khairy also co-chairs the Covid-19 Vaccine Supply Access Guarantee Special Committee (JKJAV) together with Health Minister Dr Adham Baba.

According to statistics provided during the press conference, the country has received over 1.95 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines so far.

From this, 1.78 million doses have been administered.

"At present, we have a vaccine utilisation rate close to 80 percent already. This means that 20 percent is kept in storage, which will be taken into account for next week and (for) the second dose.

"We are trying to increase utilisation rate from about 70 to 80 percent. This will see vaccination centres operating seven days a week in June, where we foresee a greater number of vaccines delivered," he added.

Meanwhile, Khairy also announced that there would be some delays for 2,800 volunteers who signed up for the AstraZeneca vaccine.

This would affect those who had set up appointments for their jabs at the Kuala Lumpur World Trade Centre (WTC) on May 15 or 16.

Khairy said that they would have to reschedule the 2,800 appointments to avoid congestion at the venue for the two dates, which saw a total of 19,000 vaccination slots booked.

"We took note of the worrying increase in the number of cases. Thus, as a precaution, a number of appointments at the WTC have to be rescheduled to avoid congestion.

"For your information, we have close to 19,000 appointments set during the two days. This was according to the full capacity of the venue.

"However, this will be cut to 16,200, meaning that 2,800 appointments would be rescheduled to other dates between May 17 and 23," he said.

Those whose appointment dates are rescheduled would receive notification via SMS and MySejahtera application starting tomorrow. - Mkini