KUALA LUMPUR, June 3 — The federal government delivered about 2.9 million Covid-19 vaccine doses to Selangor as of May 30, the highest in the country, according to the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI).
Yet, Selangor only administered 398,029 vaccine doses by May 30, which means that a whopping 2,511,641 of the 2,909,670 doses delivered from the federal government to the country’s most developed state had yet to be injected into arms.
Selangor has the second highest total number of vaccines delivered per adult population aged 18 and above at 60 doses per 100 people, after Putrajaya’s 93 doses per 100 people, as of May 30.
However, the total number of vaccines administered by Selangor per adult population was the lowest in Malaysia together with Sabah at only eight doses per 100 people as of May 30.
Selangor is one of the main Covid-19 epicentres in the country, reporting more than 2,000 daily infections for the past 11 days, amid the state’s aggressive community testing programmes. Selangor also has been reporting more than 10 daily Covid-19 fatalities since May 17, including 57 deaths in just the past two days.
The administrative centre of Putrajaya reported the highest total vaccines delivered per adult population at 93 doses per 100 people as of May 30, followed by Selangor (60 doses per 100 people) and Labuan (34 doses per 100 people).
Putrajaya also reported the highest total vaccines administered per adult population as of May 30 at 56 doses per 100 people, followed by Labuan (35 doses per 100 people) and Kuala Lumpur (27 doses per 100 people).
The Covid-19 vaccines currently used in Malaysia — Pfizer-BioNTech, AstraZeneca-Oxford, and Sinovac — are two-dose regimens, which means that 100 people would need 200 doses for complete vaccination.
It is unclear why Selangor has been unable to ramp up its Covid-19 vaccination rate, with some 2.48 million vaccine doses presumably sitting in fridges as of June 1, assuming the state did not receive any extra vaccine deliveries in the past few days. Selangor administered a total of 429,011 doses as of June 1, comprising 285,214 first doses and 143,797 second doses.
According to MOSTI, which sent the press last Monday a breakdown on the number of Covid-19 vaccine doses delivered to states and federal territories, Malaysia has received about 5.2 million vaccine doses as of May 30. MOSTI did not provide a breakdown on the vaccines received by brand.
“We’ve done this based on population coverage, registration numbers, as well as now we are shifting and pivoting and giving more vaccines to the states which are Ground Zero, in particular the Klang Valley,” Vaccine Minister Khairy Jamaluddin told a press conference last Monday, when asked to explain the rationale behind the vaccine distribution.
The total 5,220,420 Covid-19 doses delivered to states and federal territories as of May 30 are as follows:
- Selangor: 2,909,670
- Sabah: 285,480
- Johor: 264,420
- Sarawak: 244,530
- Perak: 231,660
- Kuala Lumpur: 215,280
- Kedah: 174,330
- Penang: 167,310
- Pahang: 150,930
- Kelantan: 125,190
- Negeri Sembilan: 112,320
- Terengganu: 107,640
- Melaka: 100,620
- Perlis: 53,820
- Putrajaya: 52,650
- Labuan: 24,570
MOSTI’s statistics on vaccine deliveries to states, however, showed peculiar discrepancies, where Sarawak, Perak, Kuala Lumpur, Kedah, Pahang, Kelantan, Negeri Sembilan, Terengganu, and Labuan administered more vaccine doses than they received.
Kuala Lumpur, in particular, administered 190,269 more doses than it received, as the capital city had administered 405,549 doses as of May 30, despite only receiving 215,280 doses by then.
Even if the 327,144 excess doses administered by those nine states and federal territories came from Selangor’s immense unused supply of about 2.5 million doses as of May 30, it is still unclear why Selangor would leave a huge stock of some 2.2 million doses. MOSTI was unable to explain the discrepancies at the time of writing when queried by CodeBlue.
Of the total 5,220,420 vaccine doses delivered to Malaysia, only slightly more than half at about 56 per cent, or 2,913,009 doses, were injected into arms by May 30. As of June 1, a total of 3,107,218 doses were administered nationwide. Data on doses administered nationwide and by state was obtained from the Special Committee on Ensuring Access to Covid-19 Vaccine Supply’s (JKJAV) public posts.