AstraZeneca jab appointments rescheduled to prevent crowding


Ravin Palanisamy

About 20,000 AstraZeneca Covid-19 shots have been snapped up and are waiting to be administered. – The Malaysian Insight file pic, May 10, 2021.

MORE than 2,000 appointments for AstraZeneca vaccination this weekend will be rescheduled as a precautionary measure to prevent overcrowding at a time new Covid-19 cases are soaring, said Khairy Jamaluddin.

The coordinating minister for the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme said the idea is to prevent people from thronging the World Trade Centre Kuala Lumpur on May 15-16.

“Initially, 19,000 appointments were made on these two days. But these will now be reduced to 16,200 because we want to prevent overcrowding.

“The remaining 2,800 people will be given new appointment dates,” Khairy said at his weekly press conference on inoculation efforts.

The Science, Technology and Innovation Minister said the new dates for these 2,800 people would be scheduled between May 17 and 23.

He said they will be informed about the change of date through their MySejahtera app starting tomorrow. 

Khairy said that to ensure better compliance to the standard operating procedure (SOP) and to observe better physical distancing, the Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) would increase the number of halls at the World Trade Centre vaccination centre. 

Khairy said the PPVs were not operating seven days a week is because of vaccine supply, not the lack of manpower. 

“Our issue is not lack of manpower but rather a supply issue. 

“Once we have enough vaccine supplies, we will extend the operation PPVs from six days to seven days a week,” he said, adding that the country’s vaccine utilisation rate is close to 75% now. 

Khairy said that as of today, 19,718 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines have been administered since the start of the voluntary opt-in programme five days ago. – May 10, 2021.


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