SEPANG FEB 21: Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin and Director General of Health Tan Sri Dr. Noor Hisham Abdullah will be among the first to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in the National COVID-19 Immunisation Programmes that starts on Feb.24 instead of Feb.26 as scheduled.
The Coordinating Minister for National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme Khairy Jamaluddin said, the government had decided to start the first phase of the vaccination programme on Feb.24 with the prime minister and director general of health to get their first vaccine jab at the Putrajaya Health Clinic.
“Medical and non-medical frontliners will join Muhyiddin and Dr. Noor Hisham to be vaccinated on the same day,” said Khairy at a press conference after witnessing the arrival of the first batch of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine here today.
A total of 571,802 frontline staffs have registered for the COVID-19 vaccine in the first phase of immunisation.
Khairy said, 57.3 per cent from the total consists of medical and health personnel while 42.7 per cent are non-health members.
“The frontliners include the Malaysian Armed Forces (MAF), Royal Malaysian Police (RMP) RELA, prison officers, customs, Health Department and Fire Department,”said Khairy.
The vaccination programme is said to be opened on March 1 for the public registration and the inoculation is on voluntary basis.
Khairy also mentioned that 312,390 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech received today would be delivered to 16 storage centres nationwide with six in Selangor, four in Johor, three in Kuala Lumpur, two in Penang and one in Putrajaya.
On the other hand he said, the vaccine for Johor would be transported overland from Singapore at 2pm today while for Penang would be flown by aircraft at 6pm.
Meanwhile, the second batch of Pfizer vaccine is scheduled to arrive on Friday and followed by other batches in every two weeks until the full purchase order has been delivered.
The government has signed an agreement with Pfizer (Malaysia) for the procurement of 12,799,800 doses of vaccine covering 20 per cent of the population, with two doses per person. –Malaysia World News
