Vaccine rollout for all Sarawakians a top priority to prevent emergence of new Covid-19 mutations

Dr Sim (top right) and Ting attending the live session on Facebook as hosted by MBKS mayor Wee (top left).

KUCHING (Feb 27): The speed in vaccinating all 2.2 million people in Sarawak is critical to win the war against the pandemic due to the possible mutations of the Covid-19 virus, said state Minister of Local Government and Housing Dato Sri Dr Sim Kui Hian.

“If we allow Covid-19 to continue to spread within the community, the virus might mutate and result in new variants emerging in the state. That’s why the speed in vaccinating the public is crucial to overcome the outbreak,” he said.

Dr Sim, who is also State Disaster Management Committee advisor, warned that new types of vaccine might be required if the public fails to be vaccinated quick enough, leading to the virus mutating into a more resistant variant.

Contrary to the perception of guarding oneself against Covid-19, he emphasised that the main purpose of the vaccination campaign was to curb the spread of the virus within the community and to achieve the herd immunity once 70 per cent of the population is inoculated.

“The vaccination programme is a society-wide approach to handle the outbreak. Our priority now is to break the chain of transmission and once we achieve that, we can prevent the virus from mutating into new variants. Only then the vaccination can be taken as about protecting oneself from getting infected,” said Dr Sim.

He said this during a Facebook live session hosted by Kuching South City Council (MBKS) mayor Dato Wee Hong Seng. Sibu Municipal Council mayor Clarence Ting also attended the online session.

Dr Sim assured the public that the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine had been proven to be overwhelmingly effective against the coronavirus around the world and the public must give their fullest cooperation to achieve herd immunity.

“As reported before, we need 70 per cent of our population to be vaccinated and 30 per cent of our people are aged below 18 years old. This literally means almost all of those aged 18 years old and above need to be vaccinated to achieve herd immunity.”

Thus, Dr Sim said he will leave it to the state 11-member Covid-19 vaccine advisory group on the proposal to vaccinate those aged between 16 and 17 years old in order to enable the state to reach the target of inoculating 70 per cent of the population.

“It is a misunderstanding to think the coronavirus outbreak could be tackled with a limited number of people taking the vaccine. There is no point when a majority of the community still get infected while only a small group of people are vaccinated.”

The minister also stressed that getting vaccinated did not guarantee one from not being infected with the virus but it would result in less severe conditions if a person is to get infected.

“And as for whether we should open our borders once 70 per cent of the population is vaccinated, one of the factors we should consider is the risk of importing new variants of Covid-19 into the state.”

On a separate matter, Dr Sim said had been feeling fine for the past 24 hours after being administered with Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Friday and he reassured the public that experiencing mild symptoms within 24 hours of vaccination was perfectly normal.

He also assured it was safe for those who suffered from heart attacks, undergoing kidney dialysis process or cancer survivors to be vaccinated as they belong to the high-risk groups.

Nonetheless, Dr Sim remained optimistic that more Covid-19 vaccines would soon be available in the market to rein in the pandemic and the Ministry of Health was currently in the midst of studying another vaccine, Sinovac, that arrived at the country from China.

 

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