Selangor to get over 4 million vaccine doses in July

Selangor is set to receive more than four million Covid-19 vaccine doses in July, amid the slow vaccine rollout in the state despite having the highest number of Covid-19 cases and deaths in the country.

According to a chart shared by Selangor health executive councillor Dr Siti Mariah Mahmud today - which appears to be a printout of a screenshot from an online meeting with the Covid-19 Immunisation Task Force - Selangor will be allocated the most vaccine doses in the country next month.

It will receive 874,610 doses in the first week, 911,938 doses in the second week, 735,000 doses in the third week, and 1,487,162 doses in the fourth week.

The total comes to 4,008,710 doses, out of 14,191,380 doses to be distributed nationwide in July.

The target is to use 3,806,544 doses in a month, which would correspond to a utilisation rate of 95 percent.

That would mean administering nearly 123,000 doses per day, but it is unclear how much is Selangor’s capacity in dispensing vaccine doses.

For comparison, the state only administered an average of 34,879 doses per day in the last 14 days.

Previously, Siti Mariah warned CITF chairperson Khairy Jamaluddin not to lie about vaccine supplies for the state or “your nose will get longer”.

Khairy had said Selangor’s low vaccination rate is due to its limited capacity to administer vaccine doses, but Siti asserted that the state could do more but is constrained by limited vaccine supplies allocated to the state.

Siti Mariah’s claims were refuted by Khairy’s advisers Ghows Azzam and Dimishtra Sittampalam, who pointed out that Selangor has enough vaccine supplies already on hand for at least a week and has one of the lowest utilisation rates in the country (75.2 percent).

Khairy, meanwhile, said the vaccine allocations were made based on data provided in a meeting with Menteri Besar Amirudin Shari, which Siti Mariah did not attend.

According to Khairy, the Selangor government informed it could only administer 40,000 shots a day for June but could increase this to 130,000 a day in July. Vaccine supplies will be increased accordingly.

Meanwhile, in her tweet today, Siti Mariah said she had attended today’s CITF meeting and hopes to attend future meetings without fail.

She also offered Khairy an apology, saying: “Praise be to Allah your nose did not become longer. It was normal.

“My apologies for this lifetime and the next.”

For the record, the CITF aims to fully vaccinate at least 80 percent of the adult population in Labuan in July to contain an outbreak involving the highly contagious and virulent Delta variant of Covid-19.

This is followed by Selangor, Sarawak, Kuala Lumpur, and Putrajaya in August, while Johor and Penang are expected to reach the milestone in October.

Kelantan is expected to reach the milestone in November, and the rest of the country in December this year.

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