Walk-in jabs for senior citizens extended nationwide

Walk-in vaccinations for senior citizens aged 60 and above will be extended throughout the country from next week, National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) coordinating minister Khairy Jamaluddin said today.

The direct vaccination approach which began in the Klang Valley on July 17 allows people in the group to walk into any vaccination centre in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor for their Covid-19 shots.

Khairy said the current statistics at the national level have seen 95% of senior citizens registered to receive Covid-19 vaccine jabs.

In a media conference on the development of PICK today, he said the Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force (CITF) had decided to extend walk-in vaccinations from the Klang Valley to all states.

He said the move was to help each state achieve the threshold value of 40% of the adult population receive both doses of vaccine by Aug 31.

Towards this objective, Khairy said PICK had set two criteria in delivering vaccines to all states which are outbreak control and states with low rates of vaccination.

“We want to ensure that states with low rates of vaccination are assisted towards achieving the 40% threshold value,” he said.

On the procurement of Covid-19 vaccines, Khairy said to date the country has received 11.34 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine, 2.41 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine and 14.4 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine.

He also said CITF would be discussing the need to procure additional Sinovac doses in the meeting of the Special Committee on Covid-19 Vaccine Supply this Friday.

On allegations that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine manufacturer would be raising its prices, Khairy said the government’s negotiation with the manufacturer for purchase in 2022 would commence.

“We have not finalised the procurement required by Malaysia including the selling price,” he said.