Khairy S Advisers Refute Siti Mariah On Selangor S Vaccination Issue

---

 



Two advisers to minister in charge of the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (NIP) Khairy Jamaluddin have responded to Selangor health executive councillor Siti Mariah Mahmud’s criticisms about vaccine supply in the state.
Khairy’s science adviser Ghows Azzam and technology adviser Dimishtra Sittampalam both refuted Siti Mariah who had earlier urged the minister to “be truthful” about vaccine supply in the state.
“Salam YB Siti Mariah, you could have easily contacted the Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) regarding this instead of putting it on social media,” Ghows said in reply to a tweet from Siti Mariah.
He said Selangor currently has about 339,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine, according to the vaccine management system.
“With Selangor utilising (vaccine doses) at 40,000 a day, this is enough for at least a week."

The state is also expected to have scheduled vaccine deliveries every day for the next seven days starting tomorrow, he added.

Attached to this tweet was a collage of vaccine delivery schedules to various vaccine centres, better known by their Malay acronym, PPV, in Selangor from June 28 to July 4.
Ghows (above) also responded to another tweet from Siti Mariah, who had said the current vaccination capacity in Selangor PPV stood at 87,616 and that if no additional vaccines were to arrive by tomorrow, some PPVs will have to close.
He said Selangor is currently administering no more than 46,000 vaccine doses a day, and that the vaccine doses supplied to the state are able to accommodate more than that.
He included a chart of Selangor’s daily vaccination rate in the tweet as well.
According to the chart which dates back to June 1, Selangor administered the least number of doses on June 6, at 5,613 doses.
It has increased since then and has ramped up to over 40,000 a day since June 22, with the highest number on June 24 with 46,291 doses.
“Increasing vaccination is something we discussed when we came to Selangor to present the accelerated plan to finish by end of August.
“We are ever willing to facilitate this,” Ghows said.

Meanwhile, Dimishtra said the vaccine utilisation rate in Selangor is currently at 75.2 percent, which is one of the lowest rates in the country.

He pointed to a few other states for comparison, such as Penang at 90.34 percent, Kuala Lumpur at 87.12 percent and Terengganu at 90.86 percent.
Dimishtra also compared Selangor to Sarawak, as both are states which the Special Committee on Covid-19 Vaccine Supply (JKJAV) is aiming to reach 80 percent coverage by August.
The most recent seven-day average of vaccine doses administered in Sarawak was 53,620 whereas Selangor was 35,731.
In terms of vaccination rate for the first dose, Sarawak stood at 31.2 percent while Selangor was 12.2 percent.
For the vaccination rate of the second dose, Sarawak is at 7.2 percent whereas Selangor is at four percent.

“And Selangor’s current utilisation rate must be taken together with JKJAV’s efforts to increase throughput here, chiefly by setting up three mega PPVs in the state itself that will administer close to 15,000 doses a day

“YB, this is a deeply misleading allegation to make, and one that is inconsistent with the facts.
“It is not our intention to prolong or politicise this issue, but we feel that this allegation must be corrected,” Dimishtra said.
Earlier today, Siti Mariah had posted a series of tweets hitting out at Khairy, who claimed yesterday that Selangor did not have an issue with vaccine supply but faced problems related to vaccination capacity.
Siti Mariah had stressed that several PPVs in the state will be forced to close soon if Selangor does not receive a fresh supply of vaccine doses soon.
“Don’t lie saying the supply is enough. Be truthful or your nose will get longer,” she had said, tagging Khairy in her tweet. - Mkini

---