KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 11 — Sarawak has inoculated about 10 per cent of its adult population with Covid-19 vaccine boosters, the highest coverage in the country, pending a state election expected by year end.
With one in 10 adults having received additional vaccine doses, Sarawak’s booster vaccination rate is more than quadruple the national adult coverage of 2.34 per cent.
As of November 8, more than half a million additional coronavirus vaccine doses have been administered nationwide, with Sarawak taking the biggest share at 208,974 doses, or 38 per cent of the country’s 547,578 booster shots given.
The 547,578 additional doses administered across Malaysia comprise mainly Pfizer-BioNTech, the only vaccine authorised as boosters for those who were double vaccinated with the same mRNA shot or Sinovac.
Based on raw data from the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) GitHub database, extremely small quantities of Sinovac, AstraZeneca-Oxford, Sinopharm, and CanSino have also been administered.
The CovidNow team explained that most of the non-Pfizer shots were extra doses for individuals who did not receive full protection from their primary vaccination, such as the immunocompromised, or for people who are contraindicated to mRNA vaccines.
Sarawak has given 10.23 per cent of its two-million adult population with additional Covid-19 vaccine doses, compared to 1.45 per cent of Selangor’s 4.7-million adult population who received extra shots.
Selangor, the country’s most developed state, has only administered 68,952 booster doses as of November 8, about three times fewer than Sarawak’s 208,974 jabs.
Sarawak has been showing a downgoing trend in terms of active Covid-19 cases and daily Covid-19 cases for the past two weeks. However, Sarawak has had the highest death per capita in the past 14 days.
As of November 9, Sarawak recorded 52 deaths from Covid-19 per one million people for the past 14 days. Other than that, Sarawak was also positioned as the state with the fourth highest Covid-19 incidence rate for the past seven days.
The national Covid-19 booster dose coverage among the adult population was at 2.34 per cent as of November 8 November.
Only five states exceed the national average, which are Sarawak, Putrajaya, Kuala Lumpur, Labuan, and Melaka with their booster dose coverage at 10.23 per cent, 6.47 per cent, 3.93 per cent, 3.74 per cent, and 2.53 per cent respectively.
The states with slightly lower Covid-19 booster coverage compared to the national average are Perak, Negeri Sembilan, Kelantan, Perlis, Pahang, and Selangor. Coverage in these states range from one and a half to two jabbed with boosters per 100 adults.
The remaining states have only around one adult protected with a booster dose out of 100 adults — Sabah, Kedah, Terengganu, Penang, and Johor.
Johor has the poorest coronavirus booster coverage in Malaysia at only 0.9 per cent of its adult population.
