SELANGOR Menteri Besar Amirudin Shari said he will meet the coordinating minister for the national Covid-19 immunisation programme Khairy Jamaluddin tomorrow to discuss possible and better collaboration on the vaccination programme.

His statement comes after the Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) alleged that SELangkah, a public health initiative by the Selangor state government, had created the recent chaos for the AstraZeneca opt-in programme through mass registration.

It resulted in some individuals receiving appointment dates for the AstraZeneca vaccine even though they did not make any bookings.

“I have just communicated with YB Khairy (sorry for not having a photo of me holding the phone) about the CITF & Selangkah statement. There was a misunderstanding in the previous statement.

“Tomorrow he invited me to meet to coordinate a more cohesive work in the future,” Amirudin tweeted today.

Yesterday, the task force said it had discovered mass third-party bookings for the AstraZeneca vaccine slots without obtaining the consent of the respective individuals during the recent opt-in.

CITF said it had contacted SELangkah, which was among those who made the mass bookings.

It said the SELangkah team had admitted to making reservations for individuals in the ImuniSEL database without checking whether they agree to receive the vaccine and to replace their original appointments with AstraZeneca.

Amirudin said such a matter could be discussed amicably and there was no need to attack each other over the media.

“Things can be discussed, why want to fight in the media,” he said in the same tweet.

On Wednesday, one million slots for the AstraZeneca vaccine opt-in for Malaysians aged 60 and below in Johor, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Sarawak and Penang were fully booked within 90 minutes.

CITF said the issue was revealed through an initial investigation that was conducted following complaints from some individuals that they had received appointment dates for the AstraZeneca vaccine even though they did not make any bookings.

The task force also said it would cooperate with relevant parties to ensure that more people would receive their vaccinations and in turn, achieve herd immunity. – May 29, 2021.