KUALA LUMPUR, July 2 (NNN-Bernama) — A total of 2,393,882 individuals or 7.3 per cent of the Malaysian population have completed the two-dose COVID-19 vaccination as of Thursday, Health Minister Dr Adham Baba said.
The COVID-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) targets that 10 per cent of the country’s population or 3.2 million people will be fully vaccinated by the middle of July.
Dr Adham said a total of 8,346,697 doses of vaccine have been administered as of yesterday, involving 5,952,815 first-dose vaccine recipients and 2,393,882 individuals who received their second vaccine shot.
“For daily vaccination, a total of 263,012 doses were dispersed yesterday,” he said in a Twitter post today.
Selangor recorded the highest number of recipients who completed both doses of the vaccine, totalling 318,774 people, followed by Johor (256,096), Sarawak (252,496), Perak (214,267) and Kuala Lumpur (209,165).
Meanwhile, Deputy Health Minister Dr Noor Azmi Ghazali in a news conference in Butterworth, Penang said about 16 million individuals have registered for vaccination, of which 34 per cent have received their first dose of the vaccine.
He said July was an important month for the National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme because apart from achieving the 10 per cent fully vaccinated population target, Malaysia was expected to receive a huge amount of vaccine this month.
“We will get between 12 million and 14 million doses of vaccine this month…we will receive the vaccines every week,” he said, adding that CITF would evaluate and distribute the vaccines according to the capacity in the state.
In another development, Dr Noor Azmi advised all contract medical officers to be patient because their issue would be brought to the Cabinet next week.
“It is not that the government or the Health Ministry doesn’t care at all, we have been discussing this for a long time and we really want to assist these young people to have a more secure future, please give us some time,” he said.
— NNN-BERNAMA