KUCHING – The Health Ministry must get down to brass tacks to investigate public complaints of being “short-changed” when being injected with Covid-19 vaccines under the national immunisation programme.
“The public are complaining that they are not getting the right dosage as prescribed by the vaccine manufacturers and are highlighting this issue through video footage on social media,” said Bandar Kuching MP Dr Kelvin Yii.
“They are questioning the effectiveness of the whole inoculation process, even raising doubts as to whether they themselves have gotten the right dosage and have been properly administered with the vaccine.”
Dr Yii, who is a medical doctor, pointed out that these complaints were rife since the implementation of the AstraZeneca vaccine opt-in programme.
He said that in light of these complaints, a proper monitoring mechanism for the whole National Covid-19 Vaccination Programme will further instil public confidence and address the problem of vaccine hesitancy in the programme itself.
“Such doubts and possible mismanagement have to be properly handled and addressed and must not be censored and ignored by the authorities,” he said.
“We have received reports that members of the public are stopped from recording or even taking photos during the inoculation.
“This does not instil confidence in the programme itself and should not happen, but instead their concerns should be properly addressed.
“While it could be human error, a proper monitoring and quality control system should be in place especially in view of the expected increasing rate of vaccinations once our vaccine supply increases.”
He said with more vaccinations happening, the tendency of possible human error may increase.
“Thus, on top of a proper monitoring system, the Health Ministry must also come up with comprehensive guidelines for Covid-19 vaccine administration errors and deviations in case of a situation like this.
“This will give clear guidelines and even resources to prevent Covid-19 vaccine administrative error, as well as ways of proper reporting in the event of administrative error, as well as actions to take after an error has occurred.”
Dr Yii said it must include ways to inform the recipient of the administrative error, how to determine how the error occurred, and to implement strategies to prevent it from happening again.
“This should cover all types of vaccines and the possible difference in terms of response and administration,” he added.
Such guidelines, Dr Yii said, have been produced and implemented by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States, including a comprehensive study of the more common administrative errors reported, along with some of their potential causes and ways to avoid them.
“This gives frontliners clear guidelines to respond in such a situation, and also peace of mind and more confidence in the programme itself for the recipients.
“That is why I urge the Health Ministry to come up with a clear and proper monitoring mechanism, as well as comprehensive guidelines to properly address this issue,” he added.
It was recently reported that a couple of Malaysians who recently got their first AstraZeneca jabs received less than the required 0.5ml dosage.
Both individuals posted videos of their shots on Twitter, showing them receiving only about 0.1ml of the Covid-19 vaccine. After lodging a complaint, one of them was later given an additional 0.4ml.
The Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force said it is investigating the two cases.
Checks on social media found that several others have similarly claimed to have received a lesser amount of the vaccine, but did not take videos of their vaccination process. – The Vibes, May 23, 2021
