KUALA LUMPUR, June 14 — The government will divert 30,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses from the national supply to the Public-Private Covid-19 Industrial Immunisation Programme (PIKAS) in June, Vaccine Minister Khairy Jamaluddin said today.
The amount accounts for slightly less than one per cent of the three million Covid-19 vaccines Malaysia currently has in stock. As of June 11, Malaysia has received 7,575,609 vaccine doses. A total of 4,490,270 doses have so far been administered according to the latest count on June 13, leaving 3,085,339 in stock.
Khairy told a media briefing today that the allocation for industries under PIKAS will be for all states, excluding Sarawak. PIKAS, which is also referred to as Phase 4 of the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK), takes effect today ahead of its scheduled launch on June 16.
Khairy said each industry will have a designated vaccination site (PPV) that will be set up by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI).
“We will start this week with several key sectors, such as manufacturing, that are currently operating under the lockdown phase. We will then open new PPVs in other sectors including construction, agriculture, retail and hospitality.
“This will be carried out in stages to ensure that sectors operating during the lockdown are given priority during the vaccination process,” Khairy said, citing the latest reports of Covid-19 workplace clusters as the rationale for the urgent implementation of PIKAS.
Khairy said the government is also considering distributing an additional 30,000 Covid-19 vaccine doses to Labuan, following a spike in new infections that Labuan Health Department director Dr Ismuni Bohari attributed to the spread of the infectious Delta variant.
The tiny federal territory with a population of just 99,600 has reported a total of 2,486 new Covid-19 cases in a fortnight from May 31 to June 13, more than double the 1,100 cases it reported in a month from May 1 until May 30.
Labuan’s Covid-19 incidence rate the past fortnight from May 31 to June 13 reached 24.96 cases per 1,000 population, more than five times higher compared to Selangor’s incidence rate of 4.59 cases per 1,000 population. Johor’s incidence rate the past fortnight was 1.79 cases per 1,000 population.
“We had a discussion on Labuan earlier today to redistribute some of the vaccines to Labuan in light of the critical situation there. We have decided to distribute more than 30,000 doses within the next week or two to Labuan. Currently, CITF is looking at the distribution capacity in Labuan to ensure that the delivery of these doses can be vaccinated immediately.
“But the 30,000 is just a start because I think Labuan really needs almost 60,000 doses,” Khairy said.
As of June 13, Labuan reached 18 per cent of its total population who received at least one vaccine dose, while 13.4 per cent of its total population have been fully vaccinated.
