KUALA LUMPUR – A total of 3,190,789 people, or 10% of the Malaysian population, have received two doses of Covid-19 vaccination as of yesterday, said National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) Coordinating Minister Khairy Jamaluddin.
He said this means Malaysia has met the first national threshold for the transition from Phase 1 of the movement control under the National Recovery Plan (NRP).
“For the adult population, 30% have received their first dose, while 13.6% have completed two doses of the Covid-19 vaccination
“Early this month, we announced we would administer 300,000 jabs on average in July, but over the last three days, we did one million doses,” he said at the Vaccine Advocacy Forum at the National Pharmacists Convention (NPC) 2021, which was streamed live on YouTube today.
Referring to the smaller number of doses administered a few months ago, Khairy, who is also science, technology and innovation minister, said this was because of low vaccine supplies as well as global inequality in vaccine distribution.
Khairy noted that, as of July 4, Malaysia had received 12.6 million doses of the AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Sinovac vaccines, from a total of 67 million doses procured.
“We are waiting for another 54 million vaccine doses; this is to indicate to the pharmacists' society that this is a clear issue of supply, not capacity, and once we obtain our supply, we are operating at a utilisation ratio of 90% right now,” he said.
Referencing data reported in countries including Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and Singapore, Khairy said the number of new cases and deaths will start to decline upon reaching 30 to 40 people fully vaccinated per 100 people (30% to 40% of the population fully vaccinated).
He said by the end of August, Malaysia will achieve 30% to 40% of the population fully vaccinated to observe a decline in the death rates based on global data.
Citing the situation in UK, he said the UK government is starting to monitor hospitalisation and death rates despite currently facing more than 300,000 cases per day due to the Delta variant, just as the country is opening up.
"So, likely, we are following that trajectory as we open up the economy; transmission cases may still be there but what we want to see are deaths and hospitalisations going down. What we need is for public and private healthcare facilities not to be overburdened with Covid-19 cases.” – Bernama, July 9, 2021
