See Chee How
BINTULU (Sept 3): The Sarawak Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) has been urged to expedite the inoculation of ‘at-risk’ Sarawakian children aged between 12 and 17 years with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Batu Lintang assemblyman See Chee How in a statement yesterday said precious time has been unnecessarily wasted by SDMC to carry out vaccination exercises amongst children and adolescents.
“To-date, the state has recorded one imported and 695 locally transmitted Delta variant cases up until Aug 29, which means a lofty 71.17 per cent of the 978 Delta variant cases in the country are found in Sarawak. In less than a month, the number of daily positive cases has escalated 10-fold.
“What is most worrying is that we have found Sarawakian children and young people making up to 30 per cent of the daily positive cases, even though the figures are capriciously withheld,” he said.
See was referring to the number of Covid-19 cases involving the Delta variant from the statistics released by Health director-general Tan Sri Noor Hisham Abdullah on Wednesday, which showed that Sarawak recorded 178 Delta variant cases between Aug 16 and 29, accounting for 67.17 per cent of all 265 Delta variant cases recorded in the country in the same period.
The Parti Sarawak Bersatu (PSB) assemblyman said on the national front, the data from Ministry of Health (MOH) Crisis Preparedness and Response Centre (CPRC) have shown that children below 18 years of age comprised 15.3 per cent of total cases.
Obviously, it is the virulent Delta variant that has resulted in the exceptionally high number of Covid-19 cases amongst younger Sarawakians, including two fatalities aged eight and 17 years, said See.
He said the state government and SDMC had since two weeks ago announced that they would not wait for the national rollout plan but start to vaccinate children and young people at once.
“However, vaccination for this ‘at-risk’ sector has been put off and delayed without any explanation.
“I must therefore call on the state government and SDMC to promptly jumpstart the vaccination exercise for those Sarawakian children and adolescents (12-17 years old) in accordance with the Clinical Guidelines that was released by the Ministry of Health (MOH) in early August,” said See.
In its clinical guidelines, the MOH stated that adolescents with underlying medical conditions are at an increased risk of severe Covid-19 and should be prioritised to receive the jab.
The guidelines also said adolescents with no underlying medical conditions are still at risk for severe Covid- 19, although the risk is lower, and that they may be offered Covid-19 vaccination.
“The timing of vaccination shall follow the National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme schedule taking into consideration existing vaccine priorities in the country.
“At this time, Comirnaty (Pfizer-BioNTech) is the only approved Covid-19 vaccine in adolescents 12-17 years old. Two standard doses of the vaccine (30mcg) should be given at least 21 days apart.
“Prophylactic oral analgesics or antipyretics, such as paracetamol or ibuprofen, should not be routinely used before or at the time of vaccination, but may be considered for the management of pain or fever after vaccination,” read the guidelines.
See said based on the said clinical guidelines, the MOH has made clear that in Malaysia, only the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine is approved for use in adolescents 12 years and older.
“This is in line with the conclusion and advice of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE),” he said.
He said that eventually, more vaccines may be modified, tested and found to be suitable to inoculate adolescents, although not at this point, and that it is futile to go into subject matter.
“I am hopeful that the Sarawak government and SDMC will be fully focused and set its priority on procuring sufficient Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines to immediately start inoculating our Sarawakian children and adolescents, without any more delay,” See said.
from Borneo Post Online https://bit.ly/3kOzDwp
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment