A TOTAL of 53,287 people have received the first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, since the first phase of the vaccination drive began on February 24.

According to the daily updates of the Special Committee on Covid-19 Vaccine Supply Access Guarantee, as of March 2, Sarawak saw the highest number of vaccinations at 9,737.

This was followed by Perak, Pahang and Kuala Lumpur with 5,714, 5,696 and 5,601 vaccinations respectively. Putrajaya reported the lowest number of vaccinations at 1,028.

As of yesterday, there were about 1.67 million registrations for vaccination. The vaccine that is being currently administered is the Pfizer-BioNTech variant.

Malaysia has also received a batch of the Coronavac vaccine from China’s Sinovac Biotech. The fill and finish process of this vaccine will be carried out in Malaysia by Pharmaniaga Bhd.

The vaccine also received conditional approval from the National Pharmaceutical Regulatory Agency recently along with that of AstraZeneca.

The government aims to inoculate 500,000 front-liners in Phase 1 of the vaccination programme.

High-risk groups and members of the public will be vaccinated in the second and third phases, which will involve 9.4 million and 13.7 million people respectively.

Coordinating Minister for the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme Khairy Jamaluddin said last week the government is aiming to vaccinate 150,000 people a day in Phase 3 of the programme.

Putrajaya is targeting the inoculation of 26.6 million Malaysians, or 80% of the population, to create a herd immunity that will curb the spread of the pandemic in the country.

The government has secured 66.7 million doses of vaccine.

Health Minister Dr Adham Baba told The Malaysian Insight on February 19 that this was enough to cover the entire population of Malaysia, including foreigners.

As of yesterday, Malaysia had 24,563 active Covid-19 cases, with the national caseload standing at 304,135. – March 3, 2021.