Perak has high vaccination rate, says state health exco chairman

JKR employee briefing on the upgrading of the temporary health clinic to Perak state chairman for health, science, environment and green technology Mohd Akmal Haji Kamaruddin (right, in blue) — RONNIE CHIN/The Star

IPOH: Perak has a high vaccination rate despite official statistics showing otherwise, says state health committee chairman Mohd Akmal Kamaruddin.

He said that 90% of the people living in Perak have received one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine and added that the Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force is currently working with the Statistics Department to update the figures.

“One of the reasons (for the high rate) is that some people received their vaccine outside of Perak,” said Mohd Akmal at a press conference at the temporary Kampung Manjoi health clinic here on Sunday (Oct 10).

According to the Health Ministry's CovidNow portal, about 79% or 1.47 million of the adult population aged 18 and above have been fully vaccinated while about 84% or 1.58 million received their first dose as of Sunday (Oct 10).

As for teenagers aged between 12 and 17, about 3% or 7,768 are fully vaccinated while 80% or 190,640 are partially vaccinated.

Mohd Akmal was asked to comment on how the state was going to achieve a high vaccination rate when all its 25 public vaccination centres (PPV) in the state are expected to be closed by the end of the month.

This comes after he said on Saturday (Oct 9) that all the PPVs would be closed as 80% of the adults in the state will be vaccinated soon and there was a lack of recipients coming into the PPVs.

Mohd Akmal said the next strategic move to get more people vaccinated was to go down to the ground, locate them and create awareness.

"I think those who have yet to be vaccinated are those without awareness. We will beef up our outreach programme," he said.