Speaking at a press conference after a visit to the WTCKL vaccination centre (PPV) today, National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme coordinating minister Khairy Jamaluddin said much would depend on the vaccine shipments.
“Phase 2 is going well. It is ongoing. Phase 3 is supposed to start in May, but I don’t know if we have enough supplies. We need to make an announcement on that,” he said.
He added that the AstraZeneca opt-in vaccination programme was special, and was categorised under Phase 4 for disease control in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, due to the high number of Covid-19 cases in the two states.
Meanwhile, he added that individuals in control trials for the AstraZeneca vaccine had only reported fevers as side effects so far.
Previously, Khairy said Phase 3 of the immunisation programme was expected to start in May 2021 until February 2022.
It would involve citizens and non-citizens aged 18 and above, with priority given to those in red zones, followed by yellow zones and green zones.
To speed up vaccinations, Khairy said the government was planning to set up more mega vaccination centres such as the one in WTCKL – which can accommodate more than 2,000 appointments a day – once the country receives more vaccine supplies in June or July.
Speaking on the AstraZeneca rollout today, he said as at noon, 682 people have been vaccinated at WTCKL, 449 at Universiti Malaya and 493 at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.
There are a total of 2,468 vaccine appointments at WTCKL, 996 at UM and 928 at UKM today.
“Based on my visit at the WTCKL vaccine centre today, the process is going on smoothly. Today we have started utilising private healthcare practitioners. Before this, we were only using those under the health ministry,” he said.
All 268,000 AstraZeneca vaccination slots for those living in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor were snapped up in less than three and a half hours on Sunday. The vaccinations will be done by the first week of June.
A million more doses of the vaccine are expected to arrive this month via the Covax facility.
Khairy had also said the opt-in programme for AstraZeneca will be expanded to other red zone states, to run in tandem with the national immunisation programme.
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