KOTA KINABALU, SABAH – Sabahans are urged not to be quick in passing judgment on the government for it is doing its level best to push up vaccination rate in the state.
Armada Bersatu Malaysia Vice Chief Ceasar Mandela Malakun said despite records showing that Sabah’s vaccination rate was among the highest in the country, certain quarters have tried to misinform the public for political gain.
He noted reports stating the state had received more than half a million in distribution of vaccines as of the middle of this month, ranking it among the top five states in the country.
“Let’s not be too quick to judge. It’s always wise to verify statements that we read from all sources. I can assure the government is doing its best on this serious matter,” he said in a statement.
Mandela referred to the recent announcement by National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme’s (PICK) coordinating minister Khairy Jamaluddin who disclosed that Sabah had received 503,590 doses as of the middle of June, sixth behind Kuala Lumpur, Putrajaya, Selangor, Sarawak and Johor, all of which received the highest distribution of vaccines under programme to date.
Mandela, who is also the Political Secretary to the Sabah Chief Minister, also said it would be unfair to throw the blame on the government over a situation it had no full control of.
He noted that the Prime Minister had explained that the government had already completed the purchase and payments for Covid-19 vaccine supplies to meet the demand to accelerate vaccination in the country, including Sabah.
“But as the Prime Minister had clarified, supplies had yet to arrive because the whole world was in need of the vaccines…
“Let us not make baseless claims to cause the rakyat to lose confidence in the government which is doing everything it can for the safety of the people.
“It’s so easy to criticise from the outside. But it’s a different story when one is inside at the heart of this massive situation,” said Mandela.
Supply in Malaysia as well as all other countries in the world remains low because manufacturers are still unable to meet the high global demand.
The situation has caused supplies to be delivered at slow pace and in small quantities at a time.
Consequently, almost the entire world has been lamenting about supply shortage with most nations having no choice but to ‘beg’ from vaccine manufacturing countries and companies.
To date, Malaysia has paid for 120 per cent of vaccines it needs but the manufacturing companies simply could not deliver all at once.
Khairy recently announced that Malaysia had received 4 million doses of Pfizer, 3.7 million Sinovac and 828,000 AstraZeneca.
The minister had also said that Malaysia would be receiving the first supplies of CanSino vaccines in July.
On average, only 10 per cent of the country’s population has received the second dose.
Although in Sabah the figure is only 4 per cent, the number of persons is higher as compared to states which have received higher number of vaccines.
It is learned that some states have received more vaccines than Sabah in view of their higher number of Covid-19 cases.
In the meantime, Mandela noted that Sabah’s capability to provide vaccines to the people is around 30,000 doses per day.
However, he said though this can be increased, the number at the moment has to be limited to 12,000 to 13,000 doses per day because of the issue of lack of supply.
“Vaccine manufacturers have agreed to increase supply and delivery to Malaysia in July and August this year. By then, Sabah would receive 729,000 vaccines in July followed by 1.1 million in August which would enable the state to provide more vaccines to Sabahans…
“Also in the coming two months, more PPVs would be set up throughout the state including outreach programmes in remote areas.
“A ‘vaccinate and register’, that is a walk-in programme, will also be introduced,” he said.
In the mean time, it is learnt that various agencies have been active in getting the rural population in Sabah to register for vaccination.
However, the statistics may not reflect the real situation in the state as according to the minister in-charge of Covid-19 matters in Sabah, Datuk Seri Masidi Manjun, manual registration takes time to be factored into MySejahtera.
