Dr Boo Cheng Hau said only 46.7% of the adult population (48.8% for Johor) had been vaccinated as of Sept 2.
This comes after health minister Khairy Jamaluddin’s announcement that Malaysia will move the pandemic into an endemic phase by October.
Khairy said that 80% of the population was expected to be vaccinated by then and that it was time for the country to “live with the virus”.
In a Facebook post, Boo said the ministry may be too optimistic in its view because of problems in pandemic management.
He said the effectiveness of vaccines such as Pfizer-BioNTech had dropped to 39% with the emergence of the Delta variant.
He also said the new variant known as Mu, detected in South America, and other potential new variants might render existing vaccines even less effective.
“We still don’t have any plans to vaccinate adolescents and children below the age of 18. We are far from achieving herd immunity,” he said.
Boo hoped the target of vaccinating 70% of the population could be achieved by the end of October and expressed concern over the increasing number of severe Covid-19 cases without symptoms among the younger population, and brought-in-dead cases.
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