Covid-19: Give Sibu vaccine supply priority, Chang tells state govt

Irene Chang

SIBU (May 1): Bukit Assek assemblywoman Irene Chang wants the state government to give Sibu priority on Covid-19 vaccine supplies.

She said this is because Sibu has the highest rate of registration for the vaccination programme in the state, which was about 80 per cent of the district’s total population.

On top of that, she said, Sibu has the highest Covid-19 mortality rate and constantly in the top three with the most daily positive cases.

However, she said, so far only about 8,800 people in the district including frontliners have been vaccinated.

“In a recent news report, (Minister of Local Government and Housing) Dr Sim Hui Kian expressed his concerns that the supplies of the vaccines in the state may surpass the number of registrations for the vaccine by July.

“This gives the people the impression that there is an adequate supply of available vaccine.

“If that is the case, the State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) and the state Health Department should send in the (vaccine) supplies to Sibu for us to resume our immunisation programme, where there are many people who have registered but are still waiting,” she said in a statement today.

Chang said if all those registered in Sibu were to receive their shots without any delay, it would be possible that the district may achieve herd immunity first, then the rest of Sarawak would follow suit sooner or later.

“This is a race against time as the virus is constantly mutating, and each mutated variant has shown signs of greater transmissibility,” she pointed out.

She also lamented that the immunisation programme was abruptly stopped when the health department had purportedly failed to deliver the promised vaccine supplies to Sibu on the second day of programme on April 20, which had led to the cancellation of the programme that day.

She said SDMC and the health department should make sure that this would never happen again as the fiasco had left many senior citizens from the high-risk groups very disappointed and frustrated.

She also urged SDMC and the state government to update Sarawakians on the status of procurement for the vaccine.

She said since the approval has been given for the state to go ahead with acquiring its own supply of vaccines, the Sarawak Covid-19 Vaccine Advisory Group (SCOVAG) under the state government should reveal what is the procurement mechanism and system to be adopted by the state.

She said she would like to know the terms and conditions that would be incurred when the vaccines are acquired from suppliers.

“Since countries which procure their vaccines directly from their suppliers would normally have complete autonomy over the vaccine selection, pricing and delivery process and so forth, would Sarawak be accorded the same autonomy in the place of Malaysia with the suppliers?” she asked.

She also said since any purchase of vaccine would invariably involve a huge chunk of the state revenue, the state government should therefore ensure that the mechanism chosen would be transparent, and would guarantee that Sarawakians would receive the vaccines at affordable prices in a timely manner to optimise the immunisation programme performance.

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