KJ: 10% to be fully vaccinated by mid-July

Smooth sailing: Khairy visiting the Bukit Jalil National Stadium vaccination centre to check on operations on its opening day.

PUTRAJAYA: The country expects to cover 10% of its population or 3.2 million people with two doses of the Covid-19 vaccine by mid-July, says Khairy Jamaluddin.

The coordinating minister for the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme said the government projected about 10.7 million doses to have been administered by then.

“Considering our vaccine supplies and capacity of our PPVs, we project to reach 10% full coverage, which is two doses, by mid-July.

“Currently, for every 100 doses we administer, 30 are second doses. So in order to fully immunise 10% of our population or 3.2 million people, we need to administer roughly 10.7 million doses. We are aiming to administer eight million doses in June, and reach 10.7 million in July.

“This will involve ramping up our daily capacity,” Khairy said at the weekly Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) joint press conference with Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba yesterday.

As of Sunday, 5.8 million Covid-19 vaccine doses have been administered in the country, including 1.6 million second doses.

Khairy said the immunisation programme’s focus was to ensure vaccination figures were ramped up.

The daily average of vaccine shots administered between June 14 and 20 went up to 189,329, from 130,842 between June 7 and 13, he revealed.

“The highest daily vaccination figure was recorded on June 17, with 221,706 doses administered. We hope to reach a new benchmark of 300,000 doses administered daily soon,” he said.

Meanwhile, CITF has received 5,621 applications from students planning to go abroad and need to get vaccinated before their travel.

“Students who wish to apply for vaccination before going overseas should email [e-mail],” said Khairy.

He also said some 100,000 pregnant women had been given vaccination appointment by CITF.

On supply, Khairy said: “Malaysia is expecting 444,600 doses from Pfizer-BioNTech and 760,888 from Sinovac this week.”

To date, the country has received four million vaccine doses from Pfizer, 3.6 million from Sinovac and 828,000 from AstraZeneca.

On why Malaysia’s vaccination rate appeared to be slower than European countries, he said this was because European Union countries “hoarded” the global vaccination supply.

“The EU negotiates with vaccine suppliers in bulk and uses its purchasing power. Many vaccine factories are also located in Europe. So they are able to hoard the supply much earlier.

“Countries in Asia, including Japan which is a very developed nation, are well behind in their vaccination rate compared to Europe, the United States, Canada and the UK.

“Why not look at our neighbouring countries? Our immunisation rate is well ahead of Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, and we are closing in on Japan,” added Khairy.