Vaccines are still available at govt health clinics

PETALING JAYA: The number of active Covid-19 cases for the past week stood at 20,017.

According to the weekly update on the Health Ministry’s KKMNow portal, of this, 446 patients were hospitalised and 21 warded in the intensive care unit (ICU), with 13 patients on ventilator support.

The remaining 19,550 were under home quarantine.

One death was also reported in the past seven days.

While the national Covid-19 immunisation drive may be a thing of the past, vaccines are still being offered at government health clinics.

The MySejahtera app has the list of vaccination centres offering these shots.

Association of Private Hospitals Malaysia president Datuk Dr Kuljit Singh, however, said private hospitals were no longer offering Covid-19 vaccines.

“During the vaccination drive, we collected stock as per MySejahtera appointments. We sold Sinovac vaccines, but they are no longer available,” he said.

He said for now, private hospitals will wait for the Health Ministry to give directions on vaccination.

Dr Kuljit said there has not been much demand for Covid-19 vaccines of late.

More than 72 million doses of the vaccines have been administered in Malaysia.

Over 27.55 million people completed two doses of Covid-19 vaccines. About 16.34 million people got their first booster while only 828,201 took their second booster.

Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee report revealed that a total of 8.5 million Covid-19 vaccine doses worth RM505mil went to waste after expiring in June this year.

The total projected vaccine requirement was 83.3 million doses, of which 72.8 million had been used, which was 88% of the projection, according to its report on the management of the Covid-19 outbreak.

It noted that the poor response to Covid-19 vaccination, particularly booster doses done on a voluntary basis, was also due to the fear of side effects from the spread of inaccurate information.