SARAWAK will not force Covid-19 vaccination on those who don’t want it, Deputy Chief Minister Douglas Uggah said today.

“We are not going to force (but) we hope everyone will want to be vaccinated,” Uggah said in his Covid-19 update briefing at the old legislative assembly building in Kuching this afternoon.

In a radio interview with RTM WFM at his office earlier in the day, Uggah, who also chairs the state disaster management committee, said the choice to be vaccinated is up to the individual.

He said even those who agree to be vaccinated have to sign a consent form.

Uggah said he is aware of anti-vaccination sentiments spreading on social media.

To debunk negative perceptions and misinformation, he said the state government will soon embark on an information blitz “to educate” people on the importance of the vaccination and why they should have it.

“It is the belief of the world’s governments that with this vaccine, the world could effectively cut the chain of transmission and (get us to) go back to our normal life.”

State health director Dr Chin Zin Hing, who was also at the briefing, said “many countries” that have undertaken mass vaccination recently have seen new cases dropping, and there also fewer hospitalisation.

Sarawak hopes to vaccinate 80% of its 2 million population who are above 18 years-old, and some 200,000 non-citizen residents vaccinated to achieve herd immunity.

A key adviser to the disaster committee, Dr Sim Kui Hian, had on Facebook said Sarawak aims to complete all the three phases of the vaccination programme by August rather than following the national target of February 2022.

He said Sarawak has set the beginning of April to complete the vaccination of all its 97,000 front-liners in phase one of its programme.

Phase two and three targets 929,000 people in the high risk category and 992,000 who are 18 and above respectively, and will start at the end of March and end in August.

Sarawak has been promised its batch of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine next Thursday and is organising a high-profile start to the vaccination programme on February 27 at Stadium Perpaduan in Petra Jaya.

Chief Minister Abang Johari Openg will be the first person in the state to be vaccinated.

“Our strategy is to leap from the current containment phase to the vaccination phase, bypassing the horrendous numbers of positive cases and deaths of the mitigation phase as seen in West Malaysia and Sabah.

“In view of Covid-19 (in our) longhouses and our (healthcare) resources being not as good as West Malaysia’s, we want to speed up and complete all three phases of free vaccination for more than 2,019,413 Sarawakians by August,” Sim said. – February 19, 2021.