KUALA LUMPUR, March 8 — The public’s response to the COVID-19 vaccine booster dose is still unsatisfactory, the Dewan Rakyat was told today.
Health Minister Dr Zaliha Mustafa said, however, there has been an increase in the number of Malaysians receiving the booster dose following campaigns implemented by the Health Ministry (MOH).
“For the first booster dose, the figure increased from 49.9 per cent to over 50 per cent now, while for the second booster shot, it increased from 1.9 per cent to 2.2 per cent a few weeks ago,” she said during the question and answer session.
She was responding to a question from Datuk Rosol Wahid (PN-Hulu Terengganu), who wanted to know if the government was satisfied with the public’s response to the booster dose.
Elaborating, Dr Zaliha said the MOH had taken various steps to encourage more people to get the booster dose, including by allowing appointments through the MySejahtera application without specific time or location and offering walk-in vaccinations for the high-risk group.
Meanwhile, the minister said that the COVID-19 infection trend in the first month of 2023 was relatively stable, adding that the number of daily cases remained around 500 since last month and dropped to 226 yesterday.
“The seven-day average of new cases ranged from 187 to 511 cases throughout January 2023.
“The infectivity rate (Rt) remained below 1.0 since the 46th Epidemiological Week 2022 ME 46/2022 (Nov 13 to 19, 2022) and 0.8 during ME 4/2023 (Jan 22 to 28, 2023),” said Dr Zaliha.
