PRIVATE clinics will be roped in for the voluntary Covid-19 vaccination drive using the AstraZeneca vaccine so as to push vaccine utilisation up to 80%, said Khairy Jamaluddin.

The coordinating minister for the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme said the vaccine utilisation rate was currently around 75% out of the nearly two million doses received.

The push to achieve 80% vaccine utilisation will begin after Hari Raya, the science, technology and innovation minister added.

“So, for example, to administer the AstraZeneca vaccine, we have brought in private clinics to handle the vaccine dispensing centres (PPV) under government-owned ProtectHealth Corporation Sdn Bhd (PHCorp).

“We will ramp up the workforce. Not only Health Ministry staff but also General Practitioners (GPs) from private sectors also will be involved,” Khairy said at his weekly press conference on updates on the country’s vaccination drive.

The private clinics’ names he mentioned were Qualitas Medical Group, BP Healthcare and QueueMed.

“We are going to push it up all the way to 80% after Hari Raya because we are now facing constraints due to increased Covid-19 cases, labour constraints and other issues.”

The addition of private GPs as vaccination centres will add to the four current PPVs – Putra World Trade Centre, University Malaya, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Ideal Convention Centre Shah Alam – designated for the AstraZeneca vaccine, which people can register to receive voluntarily.

The vaccine is being given out on a voluntary basis following controversy about rare cases of blood clotting, more prevalent among younger adults, in some western countries.

Slots for the 268,800 AstraZeneca doses already in the country were snapped up within hours after the booking system online went live at noon yesterday.

Khairy said that the government is doing everything it can to inoculate everyone quickly but admitted that supply is an issue. 

“It’s not that we don’t want people to get vaccinated quickly. The issue is supply.”

“We have another 1.1 million doses of AstraZeneca arriving this month from the Covid-19 Vaccine Global Access or Covax facility, and then we have 610,000 doses arriving from AstraZenece itself, then 410,000 doses in June and 1.2 million doses arriving in August and September,” he said.

“We are also waiting for deliveries from Pharmaniga plant for the Sinovac vaccine, which is bottled in Malaysia. That will also be this month.

“And between May 5 and 7, three more deliveries of Pfizer totalling of 258,570 will be made,” he added.

Khairy also denied that Malaysia is slow in carrying out vaccination, citing the 75% vaccine utilisation rate.

“To date, we have received 1,938,660 doses of vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech, Sinovac and AstraZeneca. 

“The amount we have injected is 1,453, 382. So, this shows a 75% utilisation rate.

“If the utilisation rate is at 10%, then fair, it is very, very slow but our utilisation rate is 75%.” – May 3, 2021.