KUALA LUMPUR, June 21 — Science, Technology and Innovation Minister Khairy Jamaluddin today said that the country is expected to hit a 10 per cent national vaccination rate by mid-July.
He said that the shift from the first to the second phase of the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (NIP) should happen at the end of this month, but added that this was not mentioned in the official announcement.
“This is because we see this phase as a dynamic one. There are three thresholds which we need to achieve, which are daily cases, utilisation of the Intensive Care Units (ICU) and the third is fully dosed. Under the NIP, the threshold value for fully dosed is 10 per cent.
“We expect the threshold value can be reached mid-July — 10 per cent fully vaccinated,” Khairy added.
He said that currently, for every 100 doses administered to vaccine recipients, 30 doses are second shots.
“So in order to fully immunise 10 per cent of the population or 3.2 million people, we need to administer roughly 10.7 million doses. Taking into consideration the ratio that I mentioned just now, we are aiming to administer 8 million doses in June and hopefully we will reach 10.7 million in mid-July,” he said, when asked as to how the government is planning to hit the 10 per cent target.
Earlier this morning at a separate event, Khairy was also quoted as saying how Malaysia’s vaccination rate remains regionally competitive amid vaccine inequity by larger western nations.
“When a comparison is made between us and Japan, who are far more advanced, they are still lagging behind as compared to, say, the United States, United Kingdom and Canada.
“Why? The UK bought vaccines five times the number of its population, same goes for Canada.
“Looking at how the companies distributing vaccines are from the UK and US, they had easier access.
“Only now they are offering aid through contributions. We will accept contributions from the US, Japan and China in the near future,” he added.
