KUALA LUMPUR, June 30 — The Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) is prioritising vaccine deliveries to the Klang Valley and Negeri Sembilan next month due to high Covid-19 incidence, said Khairy Jamaluddin today.
The vaccine minister said the CITF’s decision on vaccine distribution is guided by counsel from public health experts under the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) Family Health Development Division (BPKK).
“The expert advice from BPKK at the moment is to continue to focus on states with the highest incidence of Covid-19 transmission, the Klang Valley, as well as states like Negeri Sembilan.
“We also factored in other considerations, which include capacity and the utilisation rates of the states,” Khairy today said at a joint media briefing with Health Minister Dr Adham Baba.
Nevertheless, he described the distribution as “dynamic”, citing Labuan’s battle against the Delta variant as reasons for adjustments that will be made from time to time.
“We will continue to look at the situation on the ground. For instance, Labuan had encountered a situation where there was a need for pandemic control so we increased the delivery to Labuan,” Khairy said.
Based on data shared by Selangor executive councillor Dr Siti Mariah Mahmud on the federal CTIF’s Covid-19 vaccine deliveries to states for July, Labuan would receive the highest number of shots on a per capita basis at about 154 doses per 100 people, followed by Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya (86), Sarawak (85), Negeri Sembilan (66), and Selangor (61), all exceeding the national rate of 43 doses per 100 people.
In terms of absolute figures, Selangor will be receiving the highest number of vaccine doses at more than four million.
States with the lowest vaccination rates among their populations who received at least one dose are bottom of the list of July vaccine deliveries, with Sabah coming in last at just about 17 doses scheduled for delivery per 100 people.
Labuan is projected to be the first territory in Malaysia to reach the 80 per cent goal of full Covid-19 vaccination of the total population. As of June 28, about 15 per cent of Labuan’s total population, or 14,958 adults, have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19.
In the past two weeks from June 16 to 29, Labuan recorded the highest Covid-19 incidence rate in Malaysia at 1,751 cases per 100,000 people, more than seven times higher than the national incidence rate of 238 cases per 100,000 population.
The second highest incidence rate was recorded in Negeri Sembilan at 857.03 cases per 100,000 people in those 14 days, two times lower than Labuan. Kuala Lumpur and Selangor registered 489.54 cases and 417.66 cases per 100,000 population respectively.
In other words, the Klang Valley found about four Covid-19 cases in every 1,000 people in the past 14 days. Using incidence rates enables equal comparison across states with different population sizes.
Covid-19 death rates were also top in Labuan at 461.85 fatalities per million population in the past fortnight, 14.5 times higher than the national rate of 31.8, followed by Negeri Sembilan (112.69), Kuala Lumpur (72.72), and Selangor (58.76).
When asked if Selangor was only recently given priority on vaccines, Khairy said Selangor has always been one of the top recipients among states.
“But as I’ve mentioned many times over the last few days, the state was facing some utilisation challenges which we have overcome now with the opening up of PPVs and the increase in human resources at the PPVs. That is why Selangor has been able to increase its capacity and will be allocated more vaccines for July.
“But Selangor has always been prioritised. The weightage now has increased because of the increased capacity that Selangor can do daily so it will be able to, hopefully, do more than 100,000 jabs a day,” Khairy said.
He further noted that there are overlaps between the number of vaccines distributed between Selangor and Kuala Lumpur attributed to vaccine appointments given to residents who live near the border.
“We have to remember that some of the Selangor data had previously been captured in KL. There have been a lot of appointments that have been sent to KL PPVs for Selangor residents who live near the border. We are trying to clean up that data so we can show that Selangor has, in fact, also been receiving vaccines in KL PPVs,” he said.
Meanwhile, Khairy said he is confident that the 10 per cent fully vaccinated population target set out for Malaysia to shift to Phase Two of the National Recovery Plan will be achieved by next month.
“Different states will probably achieve this target at different rates but I’m confident they can achieve it in July,” he said.
As of June 28, a total of 5,463,128 people or 16.7 per cent of the population have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine, including 6.5 per cent that has been fully vaccinated.
In Putrajaya (24.2 per cent), Labuan (15 per cent), Perlis (14.8 per cent), and Kuala Lumpur (10.1 per cent), at least 10 per cent of the population have been fully vaccinated.
