KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 21 — Since the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme for Children (PICKids) began on February 3, the state of Kelantan has had the lowest reception rate with just 8 per cent of children, or 21,900, registered to get vaccinated.

In a series of charts posted by Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin, Sabah has the second-lowest rate with 9 per cent or 39,000 children. The national rate is 28 per cent or just over 1.023 million people.

Kuala Lumpur recorded the highest registration rate at 58 per cent (96,700), followed by Penang with 43 per cent (69,100).

“Hope parents will no longer take the ‘wait and see’ attitude since the rate of admission into paediatrics hospitals have started to rise,” Khairy wrote.

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Demographically, a separate chart posted by Khairy showed that the lowest rate of children already vaccinated with at least one dose was among the “other” ethnic groups in Sabah, at just 4.1 per cent, followed closely by the Malays in Kelantan at 4.3 per cent.  

In all states, ethnic Chinese children consistently recorded the highest rate of coverage, with 46.4 per cent of them nationally already vaccinated with at least one dose.

Malay children recorded the lowest percentage in 11 out of the 13 states and three federal territories, and also nationally with just 8.4 per cent of them having been vaccinated.

Nationally, Tamil national primary schools, or Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan Tamil (SJKT), recorded the lowest uptake with just 7.1 per cent of students being vaccinated.

Consistent to the ethnic demographic date, Chinese national primary schools or Sekolah Jenis Kebangsaan Cina (SJKC) recorded the highest rate at 41.4 per cent, followed by the Islamic primary school Sekolah Rendah Agama (SRA) (18.1 per cent) and national primary school Sekolah Kebangsaan (SK) (9.1 per cent).

When broken down, SJKTs in Kelantan recorded the worst rate with zero per cent of children vaccinated, followed by SRAs in Perak at 0.9 per cent and SRAs in Kelantan with 1.5 per cent.

 

 

The vaccination rate in urban schools is only slightly higher than in rural schools at 15.1 per cent compared to 13.5 per cent respectively.

Khairy praised the number of children who showed up for immunisation at SJKCs, and urged parents to vaccinate their children.

On the low uptake rate, Khairy said his ministry will redouble efforts to reach out to communities with low coverage.

Yesterday, Health Director-General Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said that 50,826 children aged below 12 have been infected by Covid-19 this year alone.

Of that, 50,674 (99.7 per cent) were Categories One and Two, 120 in Category Three, 28 in Category Four and four in Category Five.

“The daily bed usage among children under 12 years has shown to be increasing in line with the rising cases,” he said.

A total of three Covid deaths among children under-12 were also reported as of February 15 this year, involving two children below the age of four years and one aged five-11 years.

As of yesterday, some 14.5 per cent or 513, 393 children have received their first dose of the vaccine.