KOTA KINABALU: Sabah is on track to reach as high as 40,000 Covid-19 vaccine jabs per day by this week, as more vaccines come in and capacities are increased at vaccine administration centres (PPVs).
Sabah Health director Dr Rose Nani Mudin said the state reached the 30,000 mark on Wednesday (July 21).
“We are now re-strategising on the flow at vaccine centres, and how to distribute vaccines properly to places that need more such as high density areas.
“So at this moment, we continuously receive vaccine supply, despite a delay of maybe one or two days, but we still get them.
“What we need to do now is convince those who refused to get registered for vaccination,” she said when met on the sidelines of Chief Minister Datuk Seri Hajiji Noor's visit to Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) PPV on Thursday (July 22).
She was addressing concerns with Sabah being one of the states with the lowest vaccinations administered.
On suggestions of allowing walk-in registrations and vaccinations, she said they were already reaching out to rural villagers through the mobile outreach programme.
“We also need to remember, there are those who registered via MySejahtera, who have yet to receive an appointment. As such, before we can consider walk-ins, we need to clear this list first.
“But at the same time, we also give priority to senior citizens who did walk in and do not know how to use the MySejahtera app,” she added.
State Local Government and Housing Minister Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun, who is the Sabah Covid-19 spokesperson, had said the state will receive more than one million vaccine doses in July.
To date, the total number of vaccines received in July were 747,980 doses, another delivery of 30,000 is expected on Friday (July 23) and the next 308,880 doses is scheduled to arrive on July 28.
Meanwhile, Hajiji, after visiting the PPV at the university campus, said the state expects to achieve at least 50 to 60% of Sabah population immunised by this October.
Echoing Dr Rose Nani's statement, he said while there was a bit of delay in the vaccine delivery to Sabah, this was due to the suppliers’ side where there was late arrival to the country.
Asked whether the Sabah government plans to buy their own vaccines following 14 million of Sinovac vaccine doses available for sale to interested states and companies, he said for now, they will be relying on the vaccine provided by the Federal Government which was coming in large quantities.
“Actually we need to vaccinate about 2.7 million Sabah population (to reach herd immunity). We hope the Federal Government and Health Ministry will accommodate this,” he added.