KUALA LUMPUR – A staggeringly low number of Malay children aged between 5 and 11 have been inoculated against Covid-19, ostensibly due to vaccine hesitancy among parents.
This is despite the skyrocketing Covid-19 cases being recorded each day, as the more transmissible Omicron variant continues to surge in the country.
The latest data shared by Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin shows that the vaccine uptake among the Malay children population is the lowest among all races, percentage-wise, at only 8.4% as of yesterday.
Chinese children, on the other hand, have a far superior vaccination rate of 46.4%, according to the data uploaded on Twitter.
The Indian population aged 5 to 11, meanwhile, recorded a vaccination rate of 9.2%, while figures among the natives and “others” stand at 14.9% and 8.5% respectively.
The breakdown based on school type also shows a similar trend, with 41.4% of children from Chinese vernacular primary schools having already been vaccinated as opposed to 9.1% in public schools.
Overall, 14.7% of the children population nationwide have been inoculated.
The data shared by Khairy also showed that children in Kelantan, Terengganu, Sabah, and Putrajaya have the lowest vaccination rate, respectively at 5.3%, 6.4%, 7.4%, and 9.2%.
States with the most number of kids vaccinated are in Sarawak (28.9%), followed by Melaka (27.4%) and Kuala Lumpur (26.7%).
Acknowledging the low vaccine uptake among certain ethnicities and in certain states, Khairy said the ministry will redouble its efforts to reach out to these communities.
The National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme for Children (PICKids) is currently in its third week of implementation following its official launch earlier this month.
According to Khairy, at present, 1.022 million children are currently registered for vaccines, making up 28% of the overall population of children.
“I hope parents will not take a ‘wait and see’ attitude, as the number of hospitalisations among children are beginning to increase. Register your children for PICKids today!”
Yesterday, Health Director-General Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah had revealed that over 50,000 cases of children under the age of 12 have been infected with Covid-19 since the start of the year. – The Vibes, February 21, 2022
