KOTA KINABALU – Sabah’s Community Development and People’s Welfare Minister Shahelmey Yahya has slammed the opposition for playing politics in blaming the state government on the slow rate of vaccination in the East Malaysian state.
Assuring the fully vaccinated rate for Sabah’s adult population will reach 60% by the end of September, Shahelmey said the state government has been working hard with its Health Department and Health Ministry to speed up the vaccination process.
“The opposition leaders including Warisan president Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal and Sabah DAP acting chairman Datuk Frankie Poon Ming Fung are only playing to political sentiments without account of the facts.
“We have been trying our best and we expect 60% of Sabah’s adult population will be fully vaccinated by the end of September, and with the addition of the CanSino vaccine in Sabah, we are targeting to achieve over 80% vaccination rate by the end of October this year.
“(The opposition members) should take a rest from pointing fingers, because when Warisan governed Sabah, the Covid-19 situation was different from what we are facing now,” he said in a statement today.
Shahelmey was commenting on statements from Shafie, Poon, and other opposition members that questioned the Gabungan Rakyat Sabah (GRS) administration and its commitment in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Shahelmey also assured that hospital beds are sufficient despite the high number of Covid-19 patients, and that the Health Department and Health Ministry have plans for additional beds if they are insufficient.
He also said the state has enough ventilators.
Meanwhile, Shahelmy urged for the public to obey standard operating procedures as data has shown that Covid-19 continues to permeate the community.
“Hence, to control the infection rate, we must discipline ourselves to stay at home while we work hard to reach herd immunity,” he said.
Shahelmey asked for all parties including opposition leaders to play a role in speeding up the immunisation programme by encouraging the people in the state to get inoculated.
Following the positive response from Sabahans to get inoculated, he said, vaccine administration has been increased to 50,000 doses a day.
“Despite having a limited vaccine supply at the moment, we were still able to administer 53,655 vaccine doses yesterday,” he said. – The Vibes, August 28, 2021
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