PRIVATE hospitals are ready to assist the government with registrations for Covid-19 vaccination, the Association of Private Hospital Malaysia (APHM) said.

Its president, Dr Kuljit Singh, said this would increase the options for manual registrations.

APHM is currently communicating with the committee on Covid-19 vaccine supply.

“According to the Minister of Health, Dr Adham Baba, the majority of Malaysians have yet to register and the causes of it is being looked into. 

“We would want to increase the options for public and private patients to register manually with the assistance of our staff at private hospitals.

“This would be for the free vaccines provided by the government. Private hospitals are currently in discussion to confirm our commitment to vaccinate the public using the vaccines provided by the government,” he said in a statement.

There are 210 private hospitals in Malaysia, of which 152 are APHM members, he added.

“In 2018 there were 1.1 million admissions in private hospitals and 3.8 million out-patient visits.

“We believe with these numbers, our effort in getting more citizens and other residents in this country registered for the vaccine will enhance the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme.”

On April 4, Adham said only 7.6 million from 26.7 million targeted vaccine recipients have registered through the MySejahtera application.

This is only about 30% of the population, which the Health Ministry deems a low figure.

As of April 5, the special committee on Covid-19 vaccine supply and access tweeted that total registrations for the vaccine was 8,000,582, or 33% of the population.

As of the same date, 523,233 people have also received the first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, while 306,803 people have received both doses.

The second phase of the national vaccination programme will begin on April 19 continuing till August, involving 9.4 million senior citizens, aged 60 and above, as well as the vulnerable groups with morbidity problems, in addition to persons with disabilities.

The third phase scheduled from May 2021 to February 2022 is for individuals aged 18 and above, targeting about 14 million people. – April 6, 2021.