Many missing Covid-19 booster appointments, rues KJ

 

Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin has warned that Covid-19 hospitalisations could rise as many people are missing from their appointments for booster shots.

He said about 40 percent of people who have been given appointments did not show up for their jabs.

“If booster take-up is low, especially among the elderly and those with comorbidities, hospitalisation numbers will go up. This is for sure.

“If you get an appointment, take the booster,” he urged through his Twitter account.

Malaysia’s vaccination rate is 75.5 percent as of yesterday, putting it among the Top 10 most vaccinated countries in the world.

However, the effectiveness of vaccines has been blunted, compared to its initial rollout, due to a combination of the appearance of the Delta variant and the fact that immunity against certain diseases naturally wanes over time.

As such, many countries have rolled out booster shots to further boost immunity against the disease, despite the World Health Organization’s call to divert scarce vaccine supplies to countries with low vaccination rates instead.

People above 60 being contacted for booster shots

In Malaysia, people above 60 years old who previously received two Pfizer vaccine doses more than six months ago, or two Sinovac vaccine doses more than three months ago, are being contacted via MySejahtera and other means to provide them with appointments for booster shots.

Frontliners and immunocompromised people are also being offered the boosters and additional shots, while a decision for AstraZeneca vaccine recipients will be made soon.

Currently, only the Pfizer vaccine is approved to be used as a booster shot, including on people who previously received the Sinovac vaccine, though Khairy had previously said that other vaccines may be considered if the recipient is allergic to components of mRNA-based vaccines.

In the last seven days up to yesterday, Malaysia administered an average of 316,772 booster doses per day.

For context, of the 61,803 active Covid-19 cases yesterday, there are 5,500 (8.9 percent) patients who require hospitalisation and another 542 (0.9 percent) who require ICU admission or mechanical ventilation. This includes suspected cases.

For comparison, in late June when Malaysia had a similar number of active cases but a vaccination rate of only around six percent, the number of hospitalised patients hovered around 7,700.

The number of daily hospital admissions is still on an overall downtrend, but some states such as Johor and Pahang have seen a slight increase. - Mkini