Khairy: Mass vaccination the way out of pandemic-triggered crises

PETALING JAYA: Rapid mass vaccination is the way out of the current economic and public health crisis, says National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme coordinating minister Khairy Jamaluddin.

"Our way out of this crisis... depends on our collective strength as a society to roll out a rapid immunisation plan while managing the daily new cases and surge in terms of hospital capacity," he said at the virtual launch of the World Bank's latest Malaysia Economic Monitor entitled “Weathering the Surge” on Wednesday (June 23).

Khairy, who is also Science, Technology and Innovation Minister, noted that the recently -launched National Recovery Plan has outlined clear vaccination targets to allow the gradual reopening of economic and social activities.

"The panacea to break the painful trade-off between lives and livelihoods is, quite simply, vaccinations.

"It has to be fast, efficient and available widely," he said.

Under the recovery plan, the opening of more economic and social sectors would happen in stages as daily Covid-19 cases reduce, intensive care unit (ICU) occupancy decreases and an increasing percentage of the population has been fully vaccinated.

To achieve this, Khairy said the government set a target of administering 200,000 vaccine shots a day by July.

"I'm pleased to say that we reached this target ahead of schedule with 215,000 shots on June 15," he added.

As of June 19, he said, 4.08 million individuals or 12.5% of the population have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and 1.58 million of that number have received the full two doses.

"The government is confident of administering 11 million doses in July, 13 million doses by the end of August, and a further eight million doses by the end of September," he said.

This would mean that 60% of the population would have been vaccinated by the end of September, he added.