LABUAN, June 2 — The registration progress of the vaccination exercise here is at a slow pace, with only 56.14 per cent of the island’s population having registered up to yesterday.
Labuan Member of Parliament, Datuk Rozman Isli has thus called on the local folk to register for the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme which has been running since March.
“When most of a population is immune to an infectious disease, it provides indirect protection or population immunity (also called herd immunity or herd protection) for those who are not immune to the disease.
“Set aside our political differences, be with the frontliners to promote herd immunity in our community...the faster we achieve immunity, the sooner we resolve the pandemic.
“For example, if 80 per cent of a population (which is Labuan’s target immunisation) are immune to a virus. Four out of every five people who encounter someone with the disease won’t get sick (and won’t spread the disease any further). This way, the spread of an infectious disease is kept under control,” he explained.
Labuan is still linked to four active clusters of Patau-Patau, Victoria Merdeka, Simpang Sahari and Simpang Sungai with 4,043 cases so far.
Labuan Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) chairman, Rithuan Ismail said the slow pace of registration for vaccination could be due to many of the local folk not having the MySejahtera app in their mobile phone or did not have the gadget.
“Some senior citizens here do not have a handphone, but the People’s Representative Council is assisting them to fill up the registration form manually,” he said.
Rithuan said 40,643 of Labuan’s total population of 103,000 had so far registered.
“We are targeting to complete the vaccination exercise by November this year or earlier.
“We are currently speeding up the vaccination at all the three vaccination centres (PPV) at Labuan Hospital, Dewan JKR and Dewan Darul Kifayah,” he added. — Bernama
