Dr Sim appeals for Sarawakians to register for Covid-19 vaccine as just 52.9 pct have signed up

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Bernama file photo shows medical personnel administering the Covid-19 vaccine.

KUCHING (May 6): Only 52.9 per cent or 1.096 million of the population in Sarawak has registered for Covid-19 vaccination to date, said Housing and Local Government Minister Dato Sri Dr Sim Kui Hian.

He appealed to Sarawakians to sign up for vaccination to justify Sarawak’s push for more Covid-19 vaccines.

Dr Sim explained that the current rate of registration is equivalent to 2.18 million doses of vaccine.

“We already had 150,000 doses vaccines delivered before the end of April. We are supposed to receive a minimum 2,800,000 doses for May and July. Based on current registration, we only need to have 2,000,000 doses,” he explained in a Facebook post last night.

“How to fight for more supplies of the vaccines when we don’t have the registered people to back our demand? No one will give us more vaccines than necessary as vaccines supply is in critical shortage not only in Sarawak or Malaysia but worldwide.”

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He said the over one million eligible Sarawakians have been registered formally on MySejahtera after volunteers integrated more than 650,000 names from manual lists.

Dr Sim shared that for Phase 2 of the national immunisation programme, which started on April 19, a total of 950,00 eligible Sarawakians were targeted but only 350,000 have registered.

For Phase 3, which starts this month, the target is 1,080,000 eligible Sarawakians, he said.

#COVID19 vaccines 💉 Sarawak Registration

Finally more than 1 million eligible Sarawakian registered formally on…

Posted by Dr Sim Kui Hian on Wednesday, 5 May 2021

“We may start slow, but we are ready and capable of scaling up fast. But we need to have the numbers registered for vaccination for us to vaccinate.

“Ministry of Health and private healthcare could provide up to 80,000 jabs per day in Sarawak once vaccines are increasingly and exponentially available in the next four to six weeks,” he added.

On Feb 17, Dr Sim said the Sarawak government aims to roll out the second and third phases of the Covid-19 vaccination programme simultaneously for almost two million people.

He also said the state government wants to vaccinate all foreign workers in the state, including those here illegally.

Dr Sim said all three phases of free vaccination for more than 2,019,413 Sarawakians should be completed by August.