Several senior citizens have been turned away from a vaccination centre in Malacca despite already having an appointment to receive their booster shot.
Two of them who spoke to Malaysiakini said they were left disappointed when they were told to come back tomorrow even though the MySejahtera application had told them to come today.
The issue was due to an unexpected number of walk-in vaccinations at Tzu-Chi Jing Si Hall in Batu Berendam, causing them to take up vaccines that were meant for those with appointments.
P Visvanathan, 71, said his appointment at the venue was fixed at 3pm, according to MySejahtera, but was surprised to be told that the vaccination centre had run out of vaccines.
“I arrived at about 2.30pm and was told that the centre had too many walk-in recipients in the morning and was told to come back tomorrow morning to get vaccinated.
“When I questioned why they were giving appointments to walk-in recipients instead of those with appointments, I received no answer,” he said, adding that he was not given a new appointment on MySejahtera following the incident.
Another senior citizen who only wanted to be known as Toh said he, too, received a 3pm appointment.
The 72-year-old said the vaccination centre staff member informed her that they had decided to provide the vaccines to walk-in recipients after finding that many people did not turn up for their appointments in the morning.
However, by afternoon, the centre found that it was short of vaccines.
Toh said despite the inconvenience of having to go to the PPV centre again, she still wanted to get the booster shot.
“But the people there (vaccination centre staff) should not give (the vaccines), they should have known they had more appointments in the afternoon,” she lamented.
Currently, in Malaysia, fully vaccinated individuals aged 60 and above who have received their last Pfizer dose more than six months ago or last Sinovac dose more than three months ago will be given booster shots.
However, many people were missing their booster shots appointments, according to Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin.
Avoiding wastage
Malaysiakini visited the vaccination centre at Tzu-Chi Jing Si Hall to seek clarification and was informed that the issue was being rectified.
The vaccination centre's manager Dr Zool Raimy explained that the estimation of Covid-19 vaccines was a balancing act in order to avoid wastage.
“It is not that we want to turn people away, today we only had 600 doses (to be administered),” he said, adding that the doses had already been indented for.
Technically, walk-ins at the centre are not permitted but the staff will try to accommodate when possible.
“The doses, once taken out of the government health clinic, it is difficult to give back.
“And when it is not injected (administered) to people, the vaccine gets wasted. I don’t want to waste any vaccines,” he said.
He added that the number of daily doses at the centre was still in the experimental phase as it was the centre’s second day of operating and it started with 600 doses per day.
However, Zool said this will be increased to 800 doses from tomorrow onwards.
“We are trying our best to mitigate the situation.
“I applied to increase the doses - to 800 doses for this weekend, each day 800.
“That is our maximum capacity because with any more people, they would have to wait for too long and there would be not enough parking space,” he said.
He apologised to those who were affected today and promised to do better next time.
Meanwhile, Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said officially, there is no walk-in service for booster shots.
However, he told a press conference in Putrajaya that the matter is being discussed.
He said the priority for walk-in will be for those who are not fully vaccinated. - Mkini
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