LABUAN, Sept 21 — Labuan will kick off its Covid-19 vaccination exercise for schoolchildren aged 12 to 15 tomorrow, ahead of the reopening of school on Oct 4, Labuan Health Department director Dr Ismuni Bohari said.

He said the Ministry of Health (MoH) has given the green light for this federal territory to go ahead with its plan to offer the vaccine to 5, 563 school-going children.

“We will start the vaccination exercise for schoolchildren tomorrow and we will go according to plan,” he told Bernama today.

Dr Ismuni said the two existing Covid-19 vaccination centres, namely at the Darul Kifayah Complex and Labuan Matriculation College would be used to cater for the students from 10 primary schools, 17 secondary schools and the Labuan International School, during the exercise which would run for five days until Sept 26.

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“These children will get the vaccine at these two PPVs from early morning until late afternoon…for children aged 13 to 15, their vaccination schedule is from Sept 22 to 24, while for those aged 12, is on Sept 25 and 26,” he said.

“We hope these children will turn up according to the vaccination schedule, as the school reopening is just around the corner,” he said.

Dr Ismuni said the out-of-school children would not be left out in the vaccination exercise as walk-in vaccination had been scheduled for them on Sept 27 and 28 involving some 1, 500 children.

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He said Labuan started its vaccination exercise for children aged 16 and 17 on Sept 11 with 2, 467 of the 2, 593 children have received the first dose of the vaccine as of yesterday.

Meanwhile, Labuan Covid-19 Task Force (CITF) chairman Rithuan Ismail reminded parents to encourage their children to accept the vaccine,  as there had been complaints about parents refusing to get their children vaccinated.

“We must not leave our children unvaccinated or we will fail in our duty to achieve herd immunity within our family,” he said. — Bernama