Experts: Encourage more to sign up for vaccination

PETALING JAYA: With more than 5.3 million people having registered for the Covid-19 vaccine so far, health experts are pleased with the progress but have called for more efforts to encourage greater registration among the public.

While Malaysian Public Health Physicians Association president Datuk Dr Zainal Ariffin Omar believes the current registration rate is “good”, he has suggested a more targeted approach to get more people to sign up for the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme.

“I hope more people from the most vulnerable group will register for the vaccine because currently, out of the 22% of people who have registered, we do not know which groups they come from.

“There should be an age breakdown so that a more targeted promotion (of the vaccine) can be done towards the groups which have not registered for the vaccine, ” he said when contacted.

Universiti Malaya expert virologist Prof Dr Sazaly Abu Bakar agreed that the current registration rate was at “quite a good number”, considering that the country had not received additional vaccines.

“It’s quite good now, I think there is no rush for it.

“Our cases are also going down and this shows that our control measures are working. This would make vaccination a nice option to have at this point, ” he said.

He suggested spacing out the vaccinations to prevent disappointments and long queues if there were not enough vaccines to go round.“If those who have registered can’t get the vaccine because there is not enough stock, it will create another issue, so it might be good to just space it out, ” Dr Sazaly said.

The registration for the vaccine under the national programme began on Feb 24. As of Saturday, 5,355,970 people or 22.1% of the population aged above 18 had registered for the inoculation via the MySejahtera app.

Currently, Selangor leads with the highest number of registered individuals at 1,573,649, followed by Johor (683,613), Kuala Lumpur (488,073) and Sarawak (426,039).

In Penang, 375,510 have registered for the vaccine along with 362,594 in Perak.

In other states, the numbers are: Kedah (265,031), Sabah (230,966), Negri Sembilan (216,776), Pahang (202,768), Melaka (166,943), Kelantan (141,287), Terengganu (132,991), Putrajaya (38,826), Perlis (32,513) and Labuan (18,391).

The registration for the Covid-19 vaccine through MySejahtera is one of five methods provided by the government.

The others are via the www.vaksincovid.gov.my website, the National Covid-19 Registration Vaccination Line at 1800-888-828 or through public or private healthcare facilities and outreach programmes in rural or interior areas.

The government expects to vaccinate 80% of the population or 26.5 million people in the country by February next year.

On Saturday, Malaysian Medical Association president Prof Datuk Dr Subramaniam Muniandy said the current rate of people registering for the vaccine was “too slow” in meeting the government’s 80% target.

To reach the goal, he expects at least 10 million people to have signed up for the programme by now.

Globally, countries such as Israel, the United Kingdom and United States that started vaccinating their population by the end of last year have seen a reduction in Covid-19 cases and deaths.

According to Bloomberg’s Covid-19 tracker, more than 354 million doses have been administered across 121 countries, with the United States leading at 106 million doses.

At least 20.7% of the US population have received the first dose and 11.1% the second, in the two-dose vaccine regimen.

In the United Kingdom, more than 25 million of its population have been vaccinated with 35.5% having received the first dose and 2.3% the second.

Israel, the world’s highest vaccinated population, has already given the first dose to 56.6% of its population and 45.5% have been fully vaccinated out of its total nine million people.