SEPANG – Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and Health Director-General Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah will be among the first to receive the Covid-19 vaccine when the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme rolls out on Wednesday ahead of schedule, said Khairy Jamaluddin.
The National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme Coordinating Minister said the government will kick off the first phase of the vaccination programme on Wednesday instead Friday, as earlier scheduled.
“We have decided to bring forward the Covid-19 immunisation roll-out to Wednesday, February 24, with the prime minister and health director-general to get their first vaccine jab at the Putrajaya Health Clinic,” he told a press conference after witnessing the arrival of the first batch of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine here today.
Medical and non-medical frontliners will join Muhyiddin and Dr Noor Hisham to be vaccinated on the same day, he added.
Khairy said the efficiency and preparedness of the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency (NPRA) and the Pharmacy Division of the Health Ministry (MoH) in ensuring the smooth delivery and receipt of the vaccine made it possible for the immunisation programme to be launched earlier.
“We now realise we can launch it earlier although we had initially expected to take several days to deliver the vaccine to the vaccine storage centres. The NPRA also has to assess the log list for every delivery of the vaccine; it has to check to ensure there are no defects.
“But when we saw the efficiency of the NPRA (and) the Pharmacy Division of MoH, and found that everyone is ready after inspecting the vaccine storage centres, the prime minister said, ‘let’s start early, there is no need to wait until Friday’,” said Khairy, who is also science, technology and innovation minister.
He said 271,802 frontliners have registered for the vaccination programme.
He said 57.3% of them are medical and health personnel while 42.7% are from other sectors, such as the armed forces, police, Prisons Department, Customs Department, and Fire and Rescue Department. – Bernama, February 21, 2021
