KUALA LUMPUR, July 23 — Operation Surge Capacity (OSC) will likely achieve its first goal after inoculating more than 132,000 people daily in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur with their first Covid-19 vaccine dose in the past week.
From July 16 to July 22, based on a rolling seven-day rolling average, Selangor and Kuala Lumpur administered 132,169 first doses a day, exceeding by about 2 per cent the original target of minimum 130,000 first doses.
Under OSC — managed by both the federal Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) and the Selangor state government — the accelerated vaccine rollout in the Klang Valley aims to administer at least the first dose to 1.3 million people in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur from July 16 until July 25.
That means for the first 10 days — from July 16 until July 25 — Selangor and Kuala Lumpur must administer at least 130,000 first doses a day.
From July 16 to July 22, a total of 925,186 people in the country’s most industrialised state and the capital city received at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose.
Going by the average rate of about 132,000 first doses administered daily, OSC will likely achieve its target of vaccinating the remaining 375,000 people of the 1.3 million target within three days by July 25 as scheduled.
According to Vaccine Minister Khairy Jamaluddin last July 16, under the second stage of OSC, another 1.3 million adults in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur will receive their first dose of the coronavirus vaccine from July 26 until August 1.
This shows that starting from next Monday (July 26), an average of 185,714 first doses must be administered daily in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor in order to achieve OSC’s target to vaccinate all six million plus adults there with at least their first dose by August 1.
Under OSC, the Covid-19 vaccination rate in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur as a whole was targeted to increase from 180,000 to 272,000 daily jabs from July 16 until August 1, comprising 181,000 first doses and 91,000 second doses.
From July 16 until July 22, an average of 53,872 second doses of Covid-19 vaccines were administered in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur.
As of July 22, from the total 6,096,500 adults in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur, 71.4 per cent, or 4,352,870 people, have at least received the first dose of Covid-19 vaccines. Of them, a total of 1,429,912 people or 23.5 per cent have completed their vaccination by receiving a second dose.
CodeBlue combined the Covid-19 vaccination figures for Selangor and Kuala Lumpur, obtained from the Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force’s (CITF) raw data files on GitHub. The Special Committee for Ensuring Access to Covid-19 Vaccine Supply’s (JKJAV) social media posts has combined Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, and Putrajaya in their daily vaccination graphics since July 12.
The raw data released by CITF on GitHub contains errors as the data shows that the number of people vaccinated in Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya with their first dose exceeded the adult population in both federal territories. The number of people vaccinated in Kuala Lumpur at about 1.9 million, according to CITF data, actually exceeded the capital city’s total 1.8 million population.
It is likely that some Selangor residents who received their shots in Kuala Lumpur vaccination centres were recorded in Kuala Lumpur data by CITF.
The Malaysian government has decided not to vaccinate adolescents aged 12 to 17 years yet over fears of heart inflammation, a rare occurrence found in the United States among teenagers and young adults aged 16 years and older. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continues to recommend coronavirus vaccination for everyone aged 12 years and older, saying the benefits of inoculation outweigh risks, including the possible risk of myocarditis and pericarditis.
On July 22, Selangor and Kuala Lumpur reported a total of 7,660 new Covid-19 cases. That is approximately 60 per cent from the total number of 13,034 fresh infections reported nationwide yesterday, the second time Malaysia breached more than 13,000 new cases in 24 hours.
Selangor and Kuala Lumpur started to record more than 50 per cent of the nation’s daily Covid-19 cases consecutively since June 25, except June 26 (47.1 per cent), June 28 (47.1 per cent), July 4 (47.6 per cent) and July 19 (45.7 per cent).
Malaysia has been recording more than 100 daily Covid deaths since July 12, except July 20 (93 deaths). Since July 12, the majority of the deaths occurred in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur, including 70.9 per cent of the country’s fatalities yesterday.
As of July 16, a total of 11 per cent of adults, or 670,615 people, in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur have yet to register for Covid-19 vaccination.
It is to be noted that all Covid-19 vaccination centres (PPVs) in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor will open up walk-in services after August 1 to accommodate people who are not officially registered in population data, such as undocumented migrants, as well as those who have yet to be vaccinated by that date.
