PICKids: Walk-in vaccination at select locations from March 1

 

Starting March 1, parents and guardians can bring their children to get the Covid-19 vaccine under the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme for Children (PICKids) at selected vaccination centres (PPVs) on a walk-in basis.

Deputy Health Minister Dr Noor Azmi Ghazali, in a statement today, said state health departments will issue the list of PPVs through their respective websites in the near future.

“Parents and guardians are advised to check the list of PPVs implementing walk-in vaccination and take the opportunity to vaccinate their children during the school holidays,” said Noor Azmi who is also the Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force for Children (CITF-C) chairperson.

As of yesterday, 661,752 children aged between five and 11 in the country received their first dose of Covid-19 vaccine under the programme which began on Feb 3.

Noor Azmi said the average vaccination rate was around 50,000 doses a day and if the capacity was increased to 60,000 doses a day, the target to give one dose of the vaccine to 70 percent of children could be achieved by the end of March.

He said states with the highest vaccination rate are:

• Sarawak (34.7 percent)

• Malacca (31.6 percent)

• Penang (25.7 percent)

• Perak (24.4 per cent)

States that have not yet reached 10 percent are:

• Kelantan (6.1 percent)

• Terengganu (7.5 percent)

• Sabah (8.9 percent)

A total of 3.6 million children are targeted to receive the Covid-19 vaccine under PICKids to reduce the risk of infection in schools and prevent clusters among school children.

Noor Azmi said only the Comirnaty (Pfizer-BioNTech) vaccine would be used for PICKids and children will be given two doses of the vaccine within an eight weeks interval to ensure optimum protection against the virus.

In addition, he said the Health Ministry will activate the appointment booking system in the MySejahtera application in stages from today to receive the vaccination appointments starting March 7.

“Through this method, parents and guardians can select the suitable date, time, and venue for vaccination,” he said.

The appointment booking steps are available here.

- Bernama