KUCHING, June 7 — Sarawak will receive 380,000 doses of Sinovac vaccine on Wednesday, enabling the state to speed up its COVID-19 immunisation process to achieve herd immunity as targeted, said Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Tun Openg.
He said this batch of vaccines was part of the amount announced by National COVID-19 Immunisation Programme Coordinating Minister Khairy Jamaluddin during his visit to Sarawak last week.
“Of this amount, 89,360 doses will be sent to Miri on June 10. Our target is to hit one million vaccine jabs by the end of this month,” he told a news conference after visiting the Borneo Convention Centre (BCCK) mega vaccination centre here today.
Last week, Khairy announced that Sarawak will receive 380,000 doses of vaccine every week beginning the first week of June until the end of August, putting the state on track to be the first in Malaysia to complete its immunisation programme by vaccinating 2.2 million of its population.
On the BCCK vaccination centre, Abang Johari said its first day of operation for administering the AstraZeneca vaccine was proceeding smoothly.
“Some 30,000 people registered for the AstraZeneca vaccine in Sarawak, and today 1,000 people will get their jabs,” he said.
Apart from BCCK, another vaccination centre for administering AstraZeneca has been opened at the National Youth Skills Training Centre in Miri, which will operate from today until the end of July.
Abang Johari said Sarawak is using the hybrid method of registering people in the rural areas for vaccination through MySejahtera and manually.
However, he said since many rural residents lived far from vaccination centres, they would still be inoculated if they turned up without first registering through MySejahtera or the Resident’s Office.
Abang Johari said he had asked all elected representatives to help register people in their constituencies so that Sarawak could achieve herd immunity by the end of August.
